On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 19:09, Joey Hess wrote: > I find myself going off in a rather different direction from most people > in Debian in how I maintain my packages that use automake and autoconf. > This is distressing since one of us must be wrong, and I don't like > being gratuitously different anyway. So this is your chance to convince > me I'm wrong. > > How I handle automake and autoconf now is I try to avoid touching the > unholy mess at all if I can. But as soon as I need to modify any of the > template files (configure.ac, Makefile.am, etc), I switch the package > over to build-depend on the tools, run them at build time, and clean up > all generated files at clean time. I may be moving toward always doing > this, even if I don't currently touch any template files. > > A lot of people have said this is wrong, but I have never heard a > convincing argument with real examples of why this is wrong. I do have > some IMHO good reasons for doing it this way: > I don't think it's wrong, it's just another way to do it. I actually do this for libtool itself. You are, however, leaving yourself open to problems caused by differing versions of the tools on your box to the build box (or user's box). At least by including the generated files, you know that what you upload does indeed build from source. I've shot myself in the foot a couple of times with this problem, but also shot myself in the foot by forgetting to update the files just as many times when I didn't do it this way. Scott -- Who isn't really a role model anyway!
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part