On 3/9/20 4:22 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>
> I happen to know that these have particularly complicated configure
> scripts. I will also cheerfully take suggestions for additional
> packages to test in this manner.
>
Thanks for doing this. Two things might make Gentoo an attractive test case:
1. We have the git HEAD of autoconf packaged already, so you can
easily install it with
$ ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="**" emerge sys-devel/autoconf
2. The entire distribution is source-based, and whenever we need to
patch the build system of a package that uses autotools, we run
reautoconf and regenerate the configure script as part of the
normal package installation process.
The success or failure of the subsequent build isn't a perfect indicator
of autoconf's correctness, but any (as of yet unreported) build failures
would be interesting.
You can find which packages those are with a `git grep eautoreconf` on
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/
Since we depend so heavily on autoconf, I'm sure there are lots of
developers and users who would be willing to volunteer as crash test
dummies as well. We do this every time there's a new major version of
GCC. Perhaps if you cut a release candidate after fixing the test
failures, I could popularize it on the mailing lists and ask people to
CC you on any suspicious build-failure bug reports.
