On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Christopher Lenz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 18.03.2008, at 15:50, Robert Burrell Donkin wrote: > > source distributions should be identical to the contents of version > > control > > when the release is cut. > > Where does this rule come from? it's not a rule: it's a tautology ;-) by definition, a source distribution consists of the contents of version control compressed into an archive. anything else is a binary distribution. I wonder because with CouchDB, source tarballs are created through the > GNU-Autotools based build process, rather than being a raw `svn > export` of the release tag. We don't keep the auto*-generated > configure/make files in the repository (they are generated files after > all), but do include them in source tarballs to limit build-time > dependencies and make the build process easier for the user. > > I guess we could start checking in the generating build files into SVN > if that's required. But maybe you can back that statement up a bit > before we do so? lots of binary distributions at apache contain source. this makes them binary distributions containing source, not source distributions. it's fine to distribute something along those lines to help users who want to be able to build easily but it's not a source distribution. if it makes things easier for users who want to build artifacts themselves, that's greats. source distributions (svn exports) are aimed at developers so they can create accurate diffs and contribute patches, not users. they are also useful for downstream distributors who want to be able to accurately and selectively apply patches. these groups should be able to build in the same way committers do so they don't really need it easy. binary distributions are for users, source distributions for developers. - robert
