autoconf/automake in BuildRequires

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 20:10 +0300, Dmitry Butskoy wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 
> >Any package requiring them is _broken_. Such bugs should be reported
> >upstream and fixed there.
> >
> >
> >If I were to decide, I would reject any package trying to run any
> >autotool - Packagers should learn to use patches instead.
> >
> >Sorry, if this sounds hard, but here, I do have a very strong opinion.
> >  
> >
> I clearly remember some packages which have no any ready configure 
> script at all (probably to decrease tarball size). I.e., sometimes it is 
> an upstream's policy to ship only configure.{in|ac} .
Well, this is a corner case. 

On one hand this clearly violates the auto*tools' working principles and
the GNU standards these tools are based on, on the other hand, if
upstream doesn't ship the generated files, they must clearly specify
which versions to use and should be prepared to be flamed for doing a
bad job.

> I agree that it is bad way, but if the things are working, we should not 
> discriminate such packages...
I disagree. If upstream does a bad job, I don't see any reason to play
it nice to them. If they are shipping "underdeveloped crap", then I
don't see any reason to "pull my hair out to get it into Fedora".

> Anyway, I've already understood why it has not been included in the 
> BR-exception list. :)
Don't get me wrong: I am not religious about this, and won't block
packages because of this (I am not in a position to do so). 
I only consider this to be "the package maintainer's responsibility". 

Such maintainers, however should be conscious about potential problems,
should know how to minimize the risk and should really be "prepared and
willing" to be actively working on fixes should problems occur.

Ralf