Suggested packaging guideline: avoid running autoreconf

[Till Maas]

On Sat October 11 2008, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-10-11 at 20:31 +0200, Till Maas wrote:
> > On Sat October 11 2008, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> > > When the estimate of "300 broken packages" was tossed out in the
> > > libtool 2.2.x thread, I figured there was no way *that* many packages
> > > could be running autoreconf or libtoolize.  But I have been surprised
> > > to find no advice against this practice in Fedora's packaging
> > > guidelines; and in light of that, the number is not quite so
> > > incredible.
> >
> > There is a draft about this at:
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/AutoConf
>
> Thanks. I've edited this a bit to include references to libtoolize. I'd
> be happy to help move this forward. What's required?

You have to write an e-mail to the fedora packaging commitee and discuss it 
with them:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-packaging

> > > While forbidding the use of autoreconf (or similar: autoconf, automake,
> > > libtoolize, etc.) in specfiles is probably too extreme, I do think it's
> > > appropriate for the packaging guidelines to point out the pitfalls of
> > > this practice and advise packagers to avoid it where possible.
> >
> > I have read either in the wiki or on this mailing list, that one should
> > run autoreconf locally and create a patch from this, that is then used
> > within the spec.
>
> That is, generally, the right idea.  However, autoreconf is a bit of a
> sledgehammer and can result in a patch that is larger than necessary.
> The only files that should need patching are configure and Makefile.in.
> autoconf will produce the former, and automake the latter.  It is more
> unusual, but possible, that ltmain.sh might need patching.  libtoolize
> can be used to generate a patch in that case.

So the one would run autoreconf, but only create a patch for configure, 
Makefile.in and ltmain.sh? Or should only automake and autoconf be run in the 
normal case and then the diff is the patch?
Maybe you can add whatever should be done to the AutoConf wiki page.

Regards,
Till
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