Re: Lintian: outdated-autotools-helper-file
Am Montag, den 11.02.2008, 14:17 +0100 schrieb Daniel Leidert:
> Am Montag, den 11.02.2008, 10:54 +0100 schrieb David Paleino:
> > Il giorno Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:53:48 +0100
> > Bas Wijnen <shevek@fmf.nl> ha scritto:
> >
> > > I suggest to mandate "remove all generated files in the clean target"
> > > (formulated in a way which includes "generated by upstream", not only
> > > "generated by the build target), which implies "rebuild everything in
> > > the build target".
> >
> > I fully agree with you here: the build target should also build Makefile.in
> > from Makefile.am, for example. Thus we clean *.in, *.sub, *.guess, in the clean
> > target.
>
> The files you mention belong to the maintainer-clean target. To remove
> them in the debian/rules clean target you would often have to repackage
> the source tarball, which often includes patching, because many
> autotools-based build environments do not fully implement
> maintainer-clean. Otherwise you would need to duplicate maintainer-clean
> in the debian/rules clean target (good luck with large source archives,
> maybe including even sub-projects!). You further need to build depend on
> the whole autotools chain + additional tools like gnome-doc-utils or
> intltool or ....
I even forgot some point: The scripts (often: autogen.sh) to (re-)create
the build environment are normally only part of the upstream VCS but are
not shipped with the source tarball. So even if the project fully
implemented maintainer-clean, you would need to copy this file from the
upstream VCS or write it yourself to recreate the build environment. But
these scripts are sometimes more complicated than a simple call to
autoheader, aclocal, autoconf and automake.
I think the idea to use the pure VCS source without any
autotools-generated file creates much more issues than it maybe solves.
Regards, Daniel
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