[Fedora-packaging] Re: PackagingDrafts/AutoConf

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 11:47 +0200, Enrico Scholz wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> writes:
> 
> > AM_MAINTAINER_MODE suppresses the deps we are discussing here.
> >
> > This allows people to get away with packages containing broken
> > timestamps, which introduces risks to upstreams if not handled with
> > care and is unhandy for upstream usage.
> 
> When you are upstream, you have probably mechanism/scripts to call
> configure with special parameters (e.g. adding '-g3' to CFLAGS,
> setting a writable '--prefix', setting another CC).  Putting an
> '--enable-maintainer-mode' there does not harm.
My problem is a bit different (cf. below).

> > I am upstream maintainer of a package, which uses AM_MAINTAINER_MODE. The
> > most frequently answered question related to building issues is: "Did you
> > pass --enable-maintainer-mode?"
> 
> Reducing stability (-> occasional autotool invocations in uncontrolled
> environments) and removing features (-> ability to patch configure) just
> to avoid some support requests is a bad deal.

People (developers) are working on CVS check outs and wonder why the
Makefile don't do what they expect rsp. why their autotool-generated
files don't get updated, when rebuilding their works.

Cause: They forgot --enable-maintainer-mode.

Ralf