Re: autoconf

[Josip Rodin <joy@cibalia.gkvk.hr>]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 02:41:48PM +0100, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > 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.

If you invoke autoconf or automake on package build, you need to add these
in Build-Depends, of course.

> 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.

The Makefiles are recreated by ./configure, but configure script itself, and
Makefile.in files aren't, usually.

> > 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 ;-)

What versions does he use, anyway? I've seen people use automake and libtool
from CVS, marked with an `a' after the version number, that's wrong.

> > 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.

That's true.

> I also dont like it when people leave the configure logs in the packages,
> imagine 10kb waste for each of the 4000 packages

Yeah, config.log and config.cache are the worst :)

> (and maybe its stores your PGPPASS in the logfile...).

:)

-- 
enJoy -*/\*- don't even try to pronounce my first name