Hi,
The package I'm working on [Geomview] uses automake & autoconf, so I
thought "great! I know how this stuff works". But I keep running into
small buglets like the following.
1. Automake inserts a makefile variable "TAR" into every Makefile.in
generated. Upstream has "TAR = gtar", but I have "TAR = tar", greatly
(and needlessly) inflating the .diff. The value of TAR is hardcoded into
automake itself.
2. I patch configure.in, so after "dpkg-source -x ...", timestamps on
various files may be messed up, triggering makefile rules to rebuild
configure or Makefile.in, etc. [If you've ever built an automake'ified
project, you'll know what I'm talking about.]
Unfortunately, one of the things run is "aclocal", but without the
necessary "-I m4" flag, causing the build to fail. [Amusingly, the build
would work if automake was not installed, because the "missing" script
will just touch the files to get the timestamps in the right order.]
In light of the above, one solution that suggests itself is to just stick
autoconf and automake in the Build-depends line, and
1. run "make maintainer-clean" in debian/rules(clean), to avoid diffing
Makefile.in files, and
2. insert the proper sequence of "aclocal -I m4", "autoheader",
"autoconf", etc in debian/rules(configure).
Is it kosher to require auto* tools for building stuff? Are there
pitfalls with this that I'm overlooking? What do other people do?
Thanks,
-S
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