Re: Best practice for cleaning autotools-generated files?
On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Assume please the following:
>
> 1. Unpack upstream source, copy debian/ dir into it
> 2. make -f debian/rules clean
You should have looked for a get-orig-sources target, first. You just
skipped any orig source conditioning the maintainer had to do.
Let's assume none was required.
> 3. store the resulting build dir into a temporary dir say dir1
> 4. debuild
> 5. store a backup of your *.dsc + *diff*
> 6. make -f debian/rules clean
> 7. Now compare the build dir with dir1
> --> you get a diff (for whatever reason there are several
> examples - most of them because of broken clean targets
> which do not clean up autogenerated files)
The packaging is broken, maybe in a minor way. It depends on whether it
retools properly and will present the same differences no matter how many
times you rebuild, or do a different thing at every rebuild.
> I would consider this a situation which should be avoided if possible.
Sure, but it has nothing to do with using non-reversible transformations
during the build (such as removing files or retooling in-place).
It has everything to do with not doing a througout job in "debian/rules
clean", and not fixing/working around bugs in the upstream build system.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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