Re: A debian/rules target to rebuild pre-built stuff?
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011, Adam Borowski wrote:
> If they use AM_MAINTAINER_MODE and it's "disabled" [1], there's no way to
> check if they aren't in DFSG and/or GPL violation by shipping sourceless
> code. Forbidding it would at least deal with patching autotools output
> rather than source.
As a rule, you are supposed to get rid of all autogenerated files and
rebuild them from scratch when packaging for Debian. AM_MAINTAINER_MODE
changes nothing in that case, as you will readly notice any upstream
breakage when you try to build the package after importing a new upstream
release.
Granted, there are exceptions to all rules, but autotools has not been one
for more than a decade. In fact, we had a LOT of breakage over the years
because maintainers built packages with whatever buggy autotooling upstream
used, instead of retooling. libtool was the worst source of nastyness, but
even the simple stuff like GNU config (config.sub/.guess) caused some
trouble.
> I don't get why, when everything else has to be built from source,
> AM_MAINTAINER_MODE gets an exemption.
AFAIK, it doesn't get any exceptions, at least not in Debian.
What happens is that we do not pressure people nearly as much as we could at
the "rebuild everything autogenerated from source when not impossible" thing
in Debian, which means maintainers don't get pressured into retooling build
systems and rebuilding intermediate files.
And that happens because a large number of maintainers and upstreams really
don't care at all for the build system of whatever they're building. Not
that I know of any good buildsystems: autotools and cmake are both hideous.
Still, one has to strike a balance between distro quality, and taking out
the fun of maintaining packages for a lot of people... so we don't complain
of a half-done job until it breaks something.
After all, chances are good that you'll find that *you* have to fix
upstream's build-system and keep it in good order. Not everyone thinks this
should be part of the downstream maintainer's call of duty.
--
"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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