Re: RFC: Rules for distro-friendly packages
On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 05:35:03PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le dimanche 19 septembre 2010 à 16:47 +0200, Adam Borowski a écrit :
> > > The infamous maintainer mode *is the default* when you don’t set the
> > > macro.
> >
> > You need to either remove AM_MAINTAINER_MODE from configure.ac or
> > explicitely pass --enable-maintainer-mode or suffer the damage.
>
> > Having it disabled means that you either:
> > * don't build from source (a severity:important bug)
> > * ship sourceless code (a severity:serious bug)
>
> Sorry, but… WTFF?
If I patched an ELF binary and shipped that pre-compiled, leaving an
outdated C source, let's see how fast we'd have an angry mob of FTPmasters
and the Security Team beating me with sticks.
A monstrual sh script that's generated using all unsightly tricks that were
necessary for 70's shells is as far from being source as you can get and
still be a text file. Or do you really mean that we're supposed to patch
*that*?
> > A "configure" script produced by autotools is neither source, something
> > meant to be read by humans nor the preferred form of modification, so trying
> > to patch that is counterproductive -- either a waste of time and asking for
> > trouble if you did edit the real source, or a RC bug if you did not.
>
> A configure that modifies itself without being asked too, behaving
> differently depending on what’s on the system, is just a disaster
> waiting to happen.
It modifies itself when and only when its source has been modified -- just
like any other generated file in a well-designed makefile.
If you don't want it to be rebuilt, leave the source untouched. And if you
do modify the source, not regenerating ./configure would be wrong. If I
modify foo.c, I do expect foo.o to be rebuilt.
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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