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Re: Best practice for cleaning autotools-generated files?



On Sat, 7 May 2011 13:33:53 +0200
Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:

> * Josue Abarca <jmaslibre@debian.org.gt> schrieb:
> 
> > From: /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/README.Debian.gz
> > "Example autogen.sh and debian/rules files can be found in
> > /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/examples.  Do not use them as-is. Rather,
> > properly customize your own."
> > 
> > and from /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/examples/autogen.sh
> > " ...Still, this script is capable of cleaning
> > # just about any possible mess of autoconf files."
> 
> Aprops autogen.sh:
> 
> IMHO the upstream always should supply a proper autogen.sh script,
> which:
> 
> a) removes all autogenerated files
> b) calls all the autotools commands, which can be overridden
>    via environment (eg. $AUTOCONF, ...)
> c) does _NOT_ call configure

Nonsense. It is not the job of ./autogen.sh to revert to the VCS state
and there's no harm in ./autogen.sh calling configure with whatever
arguments are passed to ./autogen.sh - as long as those options have
the same effect when passed to ./configure for subsequent runs during
development.

Again, this has nothing to do with Debian in most cases. Fix the few
occasions where it might matter, don't make it a general requirement.

> Perhaps we could write some spec how an "good" upstream autogen.sh
> script should look like, fix them where necessary (so no individual
> logic in the control files anymore for this part) and push the
> patches to upstreams.

Try that with my upstreams and I'll do the opposite. There are no good
reasons to make such a spec which elevates personal preference to best
practice. There is no technical reason for any of these suggestions, no
benefit from these being turned into "best practice" and no gain in
Debian from wider adoption of such *preferences*.

> I've already done that for several packages in the OSS-QM project.
> (which is not meant for Debian, but completely distro agnostic)
 
I've no problem with that as long as you leave my upstreams alone.
;-)

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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