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Re: Proposed Autoconf 2.50 path



Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> wrote:

> This is true and also fails, because my point is that the file should
> already be generated with a proper version of autoconf, so you usually don't
> need to re-generate it.  If you just want to build the package, and don't
> patch it, you don't need autoconf (see /usr/share/automake/INSTALL) if the
> source is properly maintained.

But the number of packages that *do* patch configure.in or various
Makefile.am's is non-zero. That means the build systems need to deal with
it.

> Only if you change the source.  In the case where this is the normal mode of
> operation, I'd expect the person who modified the source to also perform the
> regeneration, read: the Debian maintainer.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Doing this in orig.tar.gz means you lose your
pristine upstream source. Doing it and generating your diff.gz from that
makes the diff bloated and mostly illegible.

Instead, doing it during the build means the source files can be patched,
and the generated files can be regenerated. That's the way generated files
*should* work, regardless of how they're generated.
-- 
Sam Couter          |   Internet Engineer   |   http://www.topic.com.au/
sam@topic.com.au    |   tSA Consulting      |
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