On Wed, Jun 05, 10:41, wf...@niif.hu wrote > > I also had to override dh_autoreconf for reasons explained in the > > commit message. > > It isn't a packaging issue, I just wonder: why do you wrap configure? > The usual approach to making it available is distributing it (and not > requiring Autoconf to build the software from the distribution tarball, > only to build it from the VCS checkout).
It's a feature. With the configure wrapper you can always do
./configure --foo --bar && make
regardless of whether the real configure script, configure.sh, exists
or not (it does not exist after a fresh clone or after git clean
-dfqx, for example). And this command also works if configure.sh is
outdated, for example after the checkout of a different branch which
touches configure.ac.
So you don't have to remember to run ./autogen.sh or similar to update
the autoconf files. Even better, plain "make" also works out of the
box with missing or outdated autoconf files. It recreates the real
configure script and runs it if necessary (with the same arguments
as in the previous invocation).
Also note that there are no distribution tarballs for tfortune, just
(signed) tags. Yes, this requires git and autoconf being installed in
order to compile from source. However, generating signed distribution
tarballs that contain not only the source but also a certain set of
generated files is tedious and has no real advantage, since people
who have gcc installed usually also install autoconf. Putting those
generated files under version control is even worse IMO.
Best
Andre
--
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Max-Planck-Ring 5, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Phone: (+49) 7071 601 829
http://people.tuebingen.mpg.de/maan/
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