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
