Re: Use of automake & friends vs. just running configure
On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 07:46:01PM -0600, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 01:17:41AM +0200, Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona wrote:
>
> > So, any comment / recommendation? Better to use the whole toolchain,
> > or better to use upstream configure, when available?
>
> If you can avoid running auto*, please do.
>
> If you *have* to patch a Makefile or configure script, then by all
> means, do it. But please please pretty please, remove the cruft that
> gets generated. That means nuke configure, Makefile.in, Makefile and
> other stuff on clean. That only makes the diff bigger and noisy and
> imposible to apply cleanly to newer upstream versions (which makes the
> work of the security team, NMUers and other people harder, which means
> they get pissed off at you, which means you get totally useless bug
> reports and NMUs).
>
> And specify *tight* Build-Dependencies. People can't make up their
> minds about which dammed version of automake and autoconf is the
> default.
>
> Another possibility is to run automake and friends by hand and include
> all the cruft in the patch. See comment about noisy patches above.
>
> Oh, yes, please include something like debian/README.Debian.build
> indicating any deviations from the normal expectations.
Convincing upstreams to use AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro with automake helps.
The reason is simplify life of end users (if I can use this M$
definition) and maintainers too, because autotools versions are
tipically non compatible at source levels. Anyone can always revert
to maintainer mode with a simple --enable-maintainer-mode in configure
so I really do not see any decent and reasonable justufication to do
differently.
--
Francesco P. Lovergine
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