[Fedora-packaging] PackagingDrafts/AutoConf

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 01:19 -0400, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 10:50 -0400, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > On Sun, 2008-10-12 at 01:16 -0400, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> > > I would like to make some progress on this:
> > > 
> > >         <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/AutoConf>
> > > 
> > > The goal, I think, is incorporation of something like this into Fedora's
> > > Packaging Guidelines. I'm told this is the place to come.
> > 
> > This is the right place... do you feel that Draft is ready for us to
> > consider it for inclusion in the Packaging Guidelines as is?
> 
> After some discussion on fedora-devel, I'd say "not yet".
ACK.

> While I do think it's appropriate to steer packagers toward patching
> configure and Makefile.in for trivial cases, I'm coming around to the
> notion that for more complex cases the prose should restrict itself to
> being informational.
Not ACK. Patching auto-tools sources and generated files is always
preferred, because only this guarantees deterministic builds.

If I were to decide, I would ban all calls to the autotools inside of
specs, unfortunately, many people do not want to accept this thought,
and consider running the autotools inside of *specs to be superior.

It's not a secret, I consider this practice to be "naive maintainers
outsmarting themselves" and these people to be exposing Fedora packages
to risks.

Unfortunately, I am preaching at walls :)

>   But I continue to think that certain invocations
> of the tools should be practically forbidden.  ("autoreconf -f", I'm
> looking at you.)

autoreconf is just a wrapper aiming at automating invocations of the
tools underneath and at replacing the plethora of (often broken)
"bootstrap.sh / autogen.sh etc." scripts.

So, if you intend to ban autoreconf, you should be consequent and ban
all calls to the autotools.

If you are aiming at banning "autoreconf -f" (Note: -f), then you are
right, "autoreconf -f" is harmful in many cases.

Ralf