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Re: Best practice for cleaning autotools-generated files?



* Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> schrieb:

> Not every generated file needs to be cleaned. The list can vary if the
> package is very old and depends on how the package itself handles the
> clean internally.

IMHO, *all* generated files should be cleaned away, just to be sure.
In the last decade I've encountered a lot of nasty problems w/
forgotten generated files and similar stuff.

A good rule, IMHO, is: take *only* the *actual* source files (those
written by the developers) and always regenerate all intermediate
steps. Of course this means, _never ever_ use prebuild configure
scripts etc.

To go even one step further: dont use tarballs, instead upstream's
VCS release tags (assuming upstream provides that ;-o)

> >    Since I use (or plan to use) git-buildpackage, I don't have a
> > tarball which could serve as an authoritative whitelist. Thus an
> > additional whitelist refresh step would be required every time I
> > merge the upstream branch into the debian branch. That's bad.
> 
> Is this a case of a problem with a tool causing more work? Fix the
> tool? Change your choice of tool?

No, git-buildpackage (IMHO) is the way to go. But at this point I
wouldn't do any sourcetree manipulation outside of git, do all this
within the vcs (eg. via tailored import/rebase mechanisms, etc).
I'm using a similar approach w/ my Briegel embedded build system
and OSS-QM source repositories. I could go more into detail if
you like to.

> Building direct from VCS is a nice idea but sometimes, it just isn't
> worth the pain - let the build system build the tarball and package
> from the tarball. It's just easier. Or just change the build system
> and/or the tool.

Actually, when building directly from VCS release tag causes big pain,
upstream is doing something _seriously_ wrong. So: fix the upstream
or put in an intermediate project for the (distro-independent) QM
works. (-> OSS-QM project).


cu
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