Re: Trunk r117046 fails on systems with older automake

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton@gmail.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 04 May 2014 14:02:11 -0400
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Indeed.  Moreover, please don't require different versions for the
> > trunk and the branch, as it's a nuisance to have more than a single
> > version installed.
> 
> Why would you need two versions?
> You can use automake 1.14 today even if the minimum is 1.11.
> I'm sure many people do.
> (I see I used automake 1.14 and autoconf 2.69 for 24.3.90.)

At some point, 1.11 was the requirement, and newer versions would
fail.  If that is no longer the case, then I guess there's no problem.

> >  Also, nt/INSTALL and/or the packaged Autotools it points to need to
> > be updated once we upgrade to some newer version, so please explicitly
> > announce that here.
> 
> I can't promise to remember, but failues with versions older than the
> minimum will be obvious, and only affect builds from bzr, not releases,
> so it doesn't seem like a big deal.

If you can promise prominent failures, that's okay, too.  (Evidently,
at least in this case, it was not so clear-cut, for reasons we still
don't understand.)  I'm afraid of subtle failures which can go
unnoticed for a long time.

> You can update the ezwinports versions whenever you feel like, no
> need to wait for Emacs to require them.

I don't have a luxury of doing jobs that are not strictly necessary,
and don't recommend that others use versions I don't use myself, or
upgrade when there's no real need.  Besides, which version to upgrade
to? it's not like you can promise to which version we will switch
next, can you?