[HEADS UP] GNU make 3.82

[Doug Barton]

On 03/10/2011 19:46, Ade Lovett wrote:
>
> On Mar 10, 2011, at 18:09 , Doug Barton wrote:
>> First, my point was not "there are going to be a lot of gmake
>> ports," my point was, "there will be>1 for a long time after it's
>> split into>1." You have now proved my point, thanks.
>
> Apples and oranges, my friend.  Given the sheer amount of stuff we
> have in ports/, there is a small amount of stuff that hasn't been
> updated in forever, nor ever will be, requiring the "legacy"
> autoconf-2.13/automake-1.4

And my concern is that we're heading down the same road with gmake. 
Maybe it's worth doing that, I don't know. It's hard to make an 
intelligent decision when neither you nor Mark will answer what I think 
is a totally reasonable question:

What is the urgency in upgrading gmake that prevents "fix the broken 
ports first" as an option to at least explore?

> As for the rest of your post.  It's the usual diatribe.  If you think
> you can do better, by all means, step up to the plate and actually
> _do_ something.

Um, I do quite a bit, thanks. But even if I didn't, it doesn't mean that 
I don't get to ask questions.

> Like yours truly has done reducing libtool to 1
> version, and autoconf/automake to 2 versions (legacy and current).

Yes, and that work has been greatly appreciated.

> Unless you're prepared to step up to the plate, offer alternate
> _concrete_ plans (as I have already done) and are willing to spend
> considerable brain and cpu cycles to get to the desired solution, you
> have no right to question what _is_ being done by those that _are_
> doing it.

Yeah, no ... that's not how this works. This is a community, with all 
the problems that entails. Work on something this important should not 
be happening in a vacuum. At bare minimum it's impossible to provide an 
intelligent answer to the question of, "Is there a better way to do it?" 
because we (the community) don't have all the facts. So what I'm asking 
for as step 1 is, share the facts. Then step 2 _should be_, work 
together to find the right solution. If it turns out that your idea is 
actually the best one, then great, let's do it! OTOH, throwing the door 
open and having the many smart people who are interested in making 
FreeBSD ports better have a crack at it might just result in a 
better/easier solution. It might even result in getting more volunteers 
who have the desire and ability to actually help with the work. I don't 
see a downside here. But if you'd like to engage in a discussion rather 
than throwing around ad hominem's and pointless "patches welcome" 
statements, maybe you can show me why I'm wrong.


Doug

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