+++ Yavor Doganov [2014-07-16 00:45 +0300]: > Russ Allbery wrote: > > I would still use dh-autoreconf. It's not as critical, since it's > > unlikely to be necessary for supporting new architectures, but I > > think the Autoconf and Automake files are better treated as source, > > and the generated files regenerated on every build. > > However, this is not how the GNU build system is intended to be used.
The autotools view that the stuff shipped with the source is sacrosanct has caused (and is causing) orders of magnitude more trouble than reautoconfing at build time does. We now have lots of experience which shows that reautoconfing hardly ever breaks things any more (and if it does that's something we should know about and fix). We also have lots of experience to show that using the old files shipped with the source does not work on new architectures and generates enormous amounts of largely pointless mechanical work for porters and maintainers. > > This ensures that the files can still be generated from the source, > > which in turn ensures that anyone wanting to make changes to the > > source package will be able to do so easily. > > This is an obvious plus, but consider the cons: Russ has explained why your list of cons is, overall, not convincing. If people want to expand the rationale section of the page on pro's and cons, then that's fine - it's a useful place to collect such info, but do please make sure any claims of problems are evidence-backed. I was mostly hoping for additional info on the practical changes maintainers should know about (very few of whom know anything about the autotools really work). (if your package contains construct 'foo' then it will do X and should be updated to form 'bar'). Or examples of things which break in practice, and what should be done to fix them.. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140715230748.gi22...@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk
