autoconf and epel-5

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 21:01 +0100, Simon Wesp wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> i have a little issue with autoconf and epel-5
> 
> the statement of the problem:
> 
> in configure.ac stands: 
> CXXFLAGS="-Wall -O2"
> 
> to honor the rpmoptflags i removed this line and create a patch of my
> changes.
> 
> now i have to run autoconf to implement my changes. no problem in
> fedora. in epel-5 it will abort:
> http://buildsys.fedoraproject.org/logs/fedora-5-epel/1476-hosts3d-0.97-3.el5/i386/build.log

The most authoritative thing I can find in the Wiki seems to frown on
the practice of patching configure.ac in the first place:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/AutoConf

"Autotools-generated source packages are intended to be buildable
without requiring the autotools on the host system. autoconf, automake,
libtoolize and the accompanying autoreconf shouldn't be used in the %
prep or %build sections of a package's spec file. Applying a patch to
update the configure scripts and Makefile.ins is preferred as the
results are predictable and packages are more reproducible."

If this is not in fact the agreed policy, I'd expect the agreed policy
to show up more prominently in a Wiki search for 'autoconf'. :)

Aside from that, I'd say did you read, and try, the advice you were
given in the failure log?

"You have another version of autoconf.  It may work, but is not
guaranteed to.
If you have problems, you may need to regenerate the build system entirely.
To do so, use the procedure documented by the package, typically `autoreconf'."

i.e., see if it works with autoreconf. IMHO it is generally a good idea
to use autoreconf rather than just autoconf anyway, because just using
autoconf is more likely to fail if, say, we go up a major version of
autoconf, and upstream source doesn't have a new release in that time.
autoreconf has at least a better chance of succeeding in that situation
(though it won't always).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net