First post, by Ant_222
It seems that Automake's .am files comprise the bottleneck in the keeping of patches orthogonal, or independent of each other. If some two patches add new source files to the same directory, they must needs modify the same .am file located in that directory. Whereas the latter contains a list of source files, with many filenames specified on each line, conflicts are almost inevitable, as the conflict between the Munt and the Pixel-Perfect patch shows.
A reader of the Automake mailing list has written that arranging such file lists with one file per line and keeping them alphabetically sorted will considerably reduce the likeness of the said conflicts. May I ask the developers to effect this modification in all the file lists inside .am files? Although this will break all patches that modify .am files, the benefit will greatly exceed the little trouble of fixing the patches.