[Fedora-packaging] Re: Modifying upstream tarballs

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Wed Jun 6 07:35:31 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 08:55 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 08:41:30AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 07:42 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 09:04:01PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 12:40 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > > > > Ville Skyttä wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > > I think running autotools locally before re-rolling the modified tarball 
> > > > > > instead of doing the absolute minimum changes would be ok in this case, as 
> > > > > > long as things are scripted/documented.
> > > 
> > > I've never run into a package whose autotools was not supported in some
> > > version in Fedora, and if that kind of package does exist, then it is
> > > even harder to redo the steps, so we will lose reproducablity of
> > > sources.
> > > 
> > > > > I'm uncomfortable with that, and prefer the consistency/reproducibility 
> > > > > of running autotools at buildtime, but that's just me.
> > > > This approach is the guaranteed way to ruin, because
> > > > 
> > > > 1. The autotools are not supposed to be run at built time.
> > > 
> > > Unless configure.ac/Makefile.ams are patched.
> > Then patch the generated files, too. 
> > 
> > > > 2. Many older package configurations do not work with recent autotools
> > > > and break in often subtile ways if you run newer autotools on them.
> > > 
> > > That's why we have tons of auto*<version> packages to cover all cases.
> > Well, we have some RH-patched versions around, but we don't necessarily
> > have the versions around the original authors used. The might have been
> > using differently patched versions originating from other vendors or
> > even custom versions.
> > 
> > So, even using the RH-patched versions resembling to the original
> > versions isn't guaranteed to work. 
> 
> In that case this means we would never be able to verify the pathces
> at all, so an argument to not even let the package pass.
No, it means "avoid running the autotools as part of building and patch
instead to achieve deterministic builds for Fedora".

> > > > 3. There is nothing reliable in running the autotools at buildtime.
> > > 
> > > Looks like a repetition of point 1. :)
> > 1. was poorly phrased ;) It should have been "the autotools are not
> > designed to be run at buildtime".
> 
> Why? I see nothing in the design that implies that. In fact autotools
> promote autorebuilds when a user modifies the sources of the generated
> files.
<sigh/> the autotools are code generators. (upstream) packagers are
supposed to generate and package the generated files, while maintainers
and installers are supposed not to touch them.

> > > Autotools have been known to provide deterministic results just like
> > > any other software. ;)
> > If people were using vanilla versions and if vendors would should
> > vanilla versions, yes.
> 
> If vendors like Red Hat need to modify libtool so that x86_64 is
> covered then we need to use the vendor supplied autotools anyway, so
> that's not a valid point.
Not this topic again ;) Red Hat hacks libtool to work-around the bugs
upstream libtool has not been able to fix for years ;)

Ralf






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