Re: general source package question
J. H. M. Dassen writes ("general source package question"):
> When is it a bug for a source package to have configure output
> like 'config.h' and 'config.status' already present?
When the config.h and config.status are generated automatically rather
than edited manually.
> I think this can cause trouble when the package maintainer's system
> differs from the system of the package compiler with regard to e.g.
> libraries or kernel versions. Furthermore, this will certainly cause
> trouble in the future, when Debian sources are used for a non-intel
> platform.
>
> On the other hand, some sources need to have a 'config.h' present,
> since they have an interactive configuration (e.g. netbase's
> net-tools, which has a kernel-like configuration).
The general rule is that the package maintainer should provide the
`source' for the manually-specified parts of the configuration in
whatever form the package likes it, and have the package's own
configuration mechanism use that to build config headers and Makefiles
(unless this turns out to be difficult).
In general just use common sense.
Ian.
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