From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 3 10:15:20 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61D0816A4CE for ; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 10:15:20 +0000 (GMT) Received: from kane.otenet.gr (kane.otenet.gr [195.170.0.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 204B643D48 for ; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 10:15:18 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (aris.bedc.ondsl.gr [62.103.39.226])j23AF3G7016824; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:15:03 +0200 Received: from orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (orion [127.0.0.1]) j23AFFSj001450; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:15:16 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost)j23AFFuJ001449; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:15:15 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:15:15 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Stefan Seefeld Message-ID: <20050303101515.GD1127@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> References: <4226862E.30403@sympatico.ca> <20050303034141.GA89476@xor.obsecurity.org> <42268F70.7070208@sympatico.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <42268F70.7070208@sympatico.ca> cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: where is autoconf X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 10:15:20 -0000 On 2005-03-02 23:15, Stefan Seefeld wrote: >Kris Kennaway wrote: >>Someone whose attribution has been trimmed, wrote: >>> Well, I was looking for 'autoconf' in these files but didn't find it. >>> And indeed, even though I have 'autoconf-2.59_2' installed, all I have >>> is 'autoconf259', but not 'autoconf'. >> >> This is necessary because the autoconf developers don't understand why >> backwards compatibility is important for their tools (new versions >> like 2.59 cannot be used to build old applications that were written >> for e.g. 2.13, nor can multiple versions of autoconf be easily >> installed concurrently). > > I'm aware of these (very unfortunate) incompatibilities, though I had > expected the problem to be dealt with differently (for example by > setting a symbolic link to the currently active version). Unfortunately, this won't help. There is not a single executable, or a simple set of files that one can symlink and have autoconf magically just work(TM). >> You can use the gnu-autoconf and related ports, which installs into >> /usr/local/gnu-autotools so they do not poison the build environment >> of other ports. YOu might have to play games with PATH or other >> variables to get your application to find them. > > Ok, thanks for the explanation. I usually use a similar trick to synchronize the versions of autoconf, automake, libtool on Linux, Solaris and BSD. I manually install the tools with --prefix=/opt/gnu and prepend "/opt/gnu/bin:/opt/gnu/sbin" to my PATH whenever I need to use these.