public releases / Re: Masterplan

[Guido Draheim]

> # Provide version numbers for the release archive
>
>   The release archive should provide means for installing
>   the macro into the system, so that they can be used by
>   automake, aclocal and friends. Also, we should have RPM
>   packages -- possibly even other formats as well.

I did find that public release are actually a very
deliberate process. It is actually a form of
communication to maintainers of local copies (i.e.
"administrators") that now is a good time to sync
the official part of the autoconf extension repository.

They only need to be incrementing to fullfil the need
of the usual package formats. The sfnet packaging is
currently called the 5. generation - actually that is
derived from the earlier variants for macro packaging
that partly existed before I have heard of Peter's
ac-archive or the beginnings of the gnu ac-archive.

Making up a new system is surely a good point to
start over with the next generation, and put out
incremental minor releases from there on.

There is only one need: there must be a way to
distinguish "official" categories and (acinclude
subdirectories) from those that are free to be
used locally or by third party tools.

Currently, names starting off with a big caps
character were there for the official parts,
and they only evolve slowly. I would even want
to extend it - that official categories _must_
contain a space (mapped to an underline in the
packaging distribution). That gives a wealth
of freedom to local administrators of an
autoconf extension repository, and be easy to
integrate/update the gnu part.

-- cheers, guido