[virt-tools-list] [PATCH] add AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro

[Eric Blake]

[adding libvir-list]

On 10/15/2010 06:06 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/15/2010 05:29 AM, Guido Günther wrote:
>> Hi,
>> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 04:46:23PM +0200, Guido Günther wrote:
>
> Odd - I cannot find the original mail, even when looking in the archives:
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2010-September/date.html

Oh, I see why - I was looking on the wrong list.  Libvirt patches should 
generally be sent to libvir-list.

>
>>> Hi,
>>> Please add the AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro to configure.ac for
>>> virt-manager. This allows downstream distributions to disable this
>>> feature so no autotools are required to build the package. The patch
>>> doesn't change behaviour for upstream:
>>>
>>> http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/automake/maintainer_002dmode.html
>>>
>
> The automake manual recommends against maintainer mode:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#maintainer_002dmode
>
>
>> Several years ago François Pinard pointed out several arguments
>> against this AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro. Most of them relate to
>> insecurity. By removing dependencies you get non-dependable builds:
>> changes to sources files can have no effect on generated files and
>> this can be very confusing when unnoticed. He adds that security
>> shouldn't be reserved to maintainers (what --enable-maintainer-mode
>> suggests), on the contrary. If one user has to modify a Makefile.am,
>> then either Makefile.in should be updated or a warning should be
>> output (this is what Automake uses missing for) but the last thing you
>> want is that nothing happens and the user doesn't notice it (this is
>> what happens when rebuild rules are disabled by AM_MAINTAINER_MODE).
>>
>> Jim Meyering, the inventor of the AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro was swayed
>> by François's arguments, and got rid of AM_MAINTAINER_MODE in all of
>> his packages.
>
> Furthermore, downstream distributions should not require autotools to
> build a package if they do not make any changes to any of the
> configure.ac/Makefile.am source files in the first place; and
> conversely, if you ARE patching those files, then you WANT to rerun the
> autotools and not silently disable them.
>
>>> AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([-Wno-portability])
>>> +AM_MAINTAINER_MODE([enable])
>>>
>>
>> Any chance this gets applied?
>
> I'm very reluctant to make this change without a better demonstration
> why you think it is needed, and only after exhausting other attempts to
> fix the root cause problem that you are really hitting.
>

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake at redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org