I was thinking it might be a good idea for the autoconf/automake docs to
include suggested best practices for distributing source. Said practice
to include providing ready-to-run configure script etc. in
CVS/svn/whatever if you actually intend for 3rd parties to be able to
build from your source tree.
I think "scaring off potential developers" is more serious than it
sounds; it sometimes takes hours for me to get the right combination of
autotools installed to build somebody's source tree. I don't scare
easily, but I hate wasting my time. It would take no real effort for the
project maintainers to commit their generated files. It takes inordinate
effort for some other developer.
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
--- Begin Message ---
Hi,
My prob is simple. I want to have a system made where
it will automatically checkout the *latest* SASL and
build it. Now, to checkout thru a script, "cvs co
sasl"
seems to be the best choice but then the problem
starts from there. How do I build across all
platforms? Today,I was doing it on RedHat Linux 9 and
installed the latest
autoconf,make and automake softwares from GNU and I
ran the recommended command sequences
$ aclocal -I cmulocal -I config
$ automake
$ autoheader
$ autoconf
$ cd saslauthd
$ autoconf
I always get some or the other error. Either it
complains about my versions or it says this header or
that missing,like for example "automake requires
`AM_CONFIG_HEADER', not `AC_CONFIG_HEADER'".
I may see some site and solve this but then another
one crops up and so on it goes.
Could you pls tell me the min versions/requirements to
run these commands successfully on RedHatLinux version
9 and on Solaris 9 and above?
Thanks
Biswatosh
--- "Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 11:04:31PM -0800, Howard Chu
> wrote:
> > Yes, but there's a difference between a developer
> and a package
> > maintainer. Since the configure script depends on
> specific versions of
> > the autotools, and the requirements differ for
> different packages, the
> > package maintainers ought to create these files
> and keep them with the
> > rest of the source code. As it is I have to
> maintain 5 different
> > versions of autoconf on my machine because of
> dependencies of this sort.
> >
> > Likewise, if a source tree uses automake, then a
> usable set of
> > Makefile.in files with maintainer-mode disabled
> should be part of CVS,
> > because independent developers don't need their
> Makefiles
> > auto-regenerating at the drop of a hat,
> particularly because the
> > regeneration will look for tools whose versions
> may not match those on
> > the build machine. Omitting these details is a
> good way to frustrate
> > developers and keep away people who would
> otherwise be productively
> > contributing to the project.
> >
> You bring up good points. However, I still
> maintain, that it is better
> to not keep those things in revision control. Given
> the wide target
> audience, of courier (in terms of platforms and
> such), it might make
> sense to keep the minimally needed set in revision
> control.
>
> Of course, you could also argue that people who are
> scared off by having
> to generate their own scripts should wait for public
> releases :-)
>
> Regards,
>
> -Roberto
>
> --
> Roberto C. Sanchez
> http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
> http://www.connexer.com
>
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