Re: Non-Debian packaging practice
"Junichi Uekawa" <dancer@netfort.gr.jp> wrote in message
[🔎] 87bqwdxo90.dancerj%dancer@netfort.gr.jp">news:[🔎] 87bqwdxo90.dancerj%dancer@netfort.gr.jp...
Hi,
Is there a document describing software packaging good practices for
general use, not specific to Debian, preferably in electronic form?
You might be looking for autoconf/automake (although it's a bit rusty,
and quite a few people loathe it, it's one working current standard we
have).
I'm not sure why people don't like the autotools. They generally work very
well.
The makefiles they make are even able to re-run the autotools to update
itself when needed!
They generally work well.
I know of only three problem areas:
1. User error. This is when the tools don't work correctly to do something
that is possible, because
the user is doing it incorreectly.
2. Doing things that are just not supported. Sometimes people will try to do
certain things that the tools
were never intednded to be able to do. It should surprise nobody when
there is trouble. Sometimes the
autotools are blamed for causing problems with unsupported features that
are actually due to something
else like GNU gettext.
3. Version differences: This is a legitamate gripe. The autotools don't work
nearly as wel as they could when developers
are using different versions. However, I see no way to easilly fix this.
So I must ask why do people dislike the autotools? Are there really problems
that outweigh the benefits of being able
to compile the program on strange architectures with little difficulty?
Remember that the autotools let one compile the program in the same way on a
GNU/Linux system, Cygwin, BSD, and
a large number of commercial unixes.
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