Re: RFC: Rules for distro-friendly packages
* Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> [100919 10:43]:
> Uhm, no. AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is bad for:
> * upstream -- it forces manual rebuilds
I do not understand this.
> * non-distro users -- another issue to watch for while hacking on the
> program. As long as they don't modify the autotoolage, they
> don't need autotools installed -- and if they did, they do want
> to be told what they need instead of their modifications being
> silently ignored.
Timestamps an change even when not modifying files. As user I prefer to
enable stuff explicitly. And I was bitten more than once by make
suddenly deciding to try to rebuild stuff though the versions installed
on that machine do not allow this.
> * Debian -- building things from the actual source is one of the core rules
Especially for Debian maintainer mode is a big win. While it's nice if
the maintainer regulary checks that those files still work with the
current tools and submitts patches to upstream if not, doing so at every
build without reason only means a less stable build process, users
possibly not being able to recreate the package and stuff like that.
If you do not care to depend on new enough automake versions, there is
the compromise of AM_MAINTAINER_MODE([enable]). But when chosing between
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE and no AM_MAINTAINER_MODE at all, having it is always
better as it gives people a choice what to do at configure time.
Bernhard R. Link
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