how to patch configure.ac and not require autotools

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 11:20 +0200, Dan Horák wrote:
> From a
> discussion started in
> http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2005-October/msg01545.html it is forbidden to use autotools during the build process and it suggests to patch configure and the other generated files too. But in my situation the only files that differ are configure.ac and configure. And after applying the patch their timestamps are set to the current time and because other files (Makefile.am, config.h, ...) depend on them, they want to be regenerated. The whole package seem buildable without the autotools, but with some not very nice messages about missing automake, autoconf, etc in the buildlog.

It is not forbidden.  The conclusion of the thread is that it is the
packager's responsibility to create a working package.  Ralf makes the
case one has to review what auto* changes in the package anyway (to
avoid subtle problems caused by mismatching versions) so making diffs
that others can review makes sense.  OTOH, auto* patches are very large
and once you have reviewed the changes you may decide that calling
autoconf is a better alternative.

Blindly making diffs between the original and regenerated source files
is as problematic as blindly running auto*.  The packager has to examine
the results whether they choose to call auto* from the package or
include diffs.

-Toshio
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