"David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the actual configure script could also be maintained on SF.
> Granted, configure.ac is the real source code, but it seems like a
> heavy restriction to require an up-to-date autoconf installation in
> order to compile a Squeak VM.

That's not quite the case, however.  If you just want to compile the VM
then you can use a source release.  If the releases are not frequent
enough and CVS is way ahead of the releases, then go bug the
maintainer....

<rant>
It's not up to me, but I've always thought it more logical to leave the
configure script outside of CVS.  Leave CVS for the true developers, and
require true developers to have a complete tool chain.  Trying to
support people with various fragments of the development tools sounds
like a recipe for pointless confusion and wasted effort.  It reminds me
of the "cult of the dead" world where you ship around binary files and
then "oops" write all these tools to try and make binary files act like
source files.  Use the source, Luke, and things get a lot simpler.
</rant>

In the particular case of configure scripts, remember that somehow the
configure script in the repository has to be kept up to date.  I can't
think of a method of doing this that is easier than making a new source
release.  For example, what do you do when something is posted to CVS
and it becomes impossible to produce a correct configure script at all?



Lex