Re: autoconf

["Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org>]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 02:29:01PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > I am trying to package a program using autoconf, automake, the whole bunch
> > of it. I have no experiance with that, my problem is, after building the
> > package, config.in, configure, Makefile, Makefile.am have changed and I get
> > a huge diff file for the package (I needed several tries to build).
> 
> 
> > I think, the source should be in its original state again after building,
> > how can I achieve this? Do I have to save these files before buildiing and
> > restore them again?
> 
> I don't think this is important.
> 
> > Should I delete them in the clean target and create them all again from
> > whatever input files (and how)?
> 
> That would increase the build time, but you can do it. Just re-run automake
> and autoconf in the build: rule of debian/rules, prior to ./configure.
Thanks, I will try that.
 
> > Id like to have a small diff, since I did not change anything with the other
> > files, they  just get changed, because the aupstream author uses newer
> > packages than me. I think its not good to have such a huge (superflous) diff
> > for the source package, since those files probably get rebuilt anyhow on
> > other arches?
> 
> Actually, they only get rebuilt if the date/time on the .in file is newer
> than the date/time on the resulting file, which shouldn't be the case
> usually...
I think there was some discussion about this wrt Build-Depends. Weather a
package should builddepend on automake or not. What happens on other
architectures, dont they have to re-create their config files? I would find
it a little strange, when the configure files are cluttered with i386 here
and there, but then, I have never used auto* in my own programs, no idea if
it hurts or not.

> I suggest that you either don't change the *.in files, but do your changes
> through commandline arguments/variables or some other way, or to just get in
> sync with the upstream regarding the version of autoconf/automake you use.
He switched to auto* when I asked him to clean up the build process, its
much better now, dh_make and I got a working package immediately. 
But I dont think I can make him downgrade his tools (unless I send him
potato CDs maybe ;-)
 
> There shouldn't be anything wrong in large diff because of generated files
> changes, except the utter ugliness :)    
No, I dont like this large diff, its unreadable and its a 15kb diff.gz,
where only 2kb would be necessary. Its a waste of space, really. I also dont
like it when people leave the configure logs in the packages, imagine 10kb
waste for each of the 4000 packages (and maybe its stores your PGPPASS in the
logfile...).

Christian