Bug#746514: Autoreconf during build
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 05:02:00PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, May 01, 2014 at 01:34:05AM +0200, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
> > On 04/30/2014 10:36 PM, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > > Package: debian-policy
>
> > > It seems that a lot of packages do not use something like
> > > autoreconf during build, and every time someone starts a new
> > > port he has to patches way too many packages to get config.guess
> > > and config.sub updated.
>
> > Do you have numbers?
> > There is dh_autotools-dev which works well and should be a default indeed.
>
> This bug shadows a discussion on debian-devel:
>
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/04/msg00342.html
>
> The consensus there is that we should use dh_autoreconf over
> dh_autotools-dev.
The behaviour of debhelper and debian-policy are slighly separated issue.
I will restrict here to debian-policy.
My views:
- Lintian has warned for a long time about the config.guess/config.sub
problem. Thus I think policy should mention it.
- Whether to use autoreconf or not have always been a contentious issue.
I do not think the number of package that uses autoreconf now to reach the point
of "current practice", though this is likely to change if the proposed change to
debhelper is adopted.
So I would like to restrict this report to config.guess/config.sub. After all,
this is what Kurt asked for. However the policy wording could still mention
dh_autoreconf and not just autotools-dev as a solution, if it helps.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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