Stefano,
On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 04:59:06PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 01:28:34PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > You can call auto* BEFORE you package it, and add the proper touch stuff in
> > debian/rules to take care of the timestamp skew caused by the diff.
> > This way, autobuilders and Debian users do not neet to run auto*, and you
> > can remove it from your build-dependencies. I do the samething for all my
> > packages in CVS.
> this is what I've done until now, I know this way.
> I'm only guessing if anybody knows particular poblems that discourage
> the other method.
Putting the auto-generated files in the .orig.tar.gz is usually better
than putting them in the .diff.gz; a file takes up less space in a
tarball than in a diff, and this better fits the idea of an "upstream
tarball": an author will not normally release a tarball to end-users
that requires the user to install auto-tools.
If you know you will be making changes during your packaging that will
affect the contents of the autotools-generated files, you may want to
leave these autogenerated files out of the .orig.tgz and only include
them in the .diff.gz -- this sometimes makes for a smaller package.
If you build-depend on {automake,autoconf} and don't invoke the
autotools until build-time, you face another problem as a maintainer.
You can't control the exact version of autotools that will be installed
on the Debian autobuilders. If there is ever a buggy version of the
autotools that doesn't work with your package, the only thing you can do
is use a versioned build-dep on a specific autotools package that you
know works; and if you build-dep on a version that's no longer in the
Debian archive, you have to change you build-deps /again/....
Saluti,
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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