2009/3/5 Andreas Ericsson <ae@xxxxxx>: > Joi Ellis wrote: >> >> On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> >>> Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: >>> >>>> Now, in this case, it was only one tweak and other responders have >>>> already pointed him in the right direction. So just making that tweak >>>> manually is probably the sane thing to do in this situation. >>>> >>>> But I wanted to point out that autoconf is not totally without value >>>> here. >>> >>> I am not saying something that strong, either. If autoconf generated >>> configure works _for you_ without hassle, great. Keep using it. >>> >>> The original message that started this thread was what to do when it does >>> NOT work for you, and my point was in general it is much nicer to point >>> at >>> the knob to tweak from the make invocation command line (or in >>> config.mak) >>> than having you spend time on upgrade autoconf, generate configure and >>> run >>> it. >> >> Actually, guys, if you go back and re-read my original message, I was >> pointing out that if you use a 'git clone' to get a build tree, THERE IS >> NO CONFIGURE SCRIPT in the tree. >> >> The problem is not that the configure script does not work. I pointed >> out in the first paragraph that the configure script in the TARBALL >> works just fine. What I pointed out is that the build tree DOES NOT >> PROVIDE THE CONFIGURE SCRIPT. All I asked you to do is to consider >> adding the configure script to the repository so that it gets pushed out >> in a clone. >> >>> Fanboys may say that autoconf generated configure is the greatest thing >>> since sliced bread. But let's face it. Honestly, the track record of >>> those people in keeping autoconf part in this project up-to-date has not >>> been all that great. There are things that the generated configure file >>> does not detect nor configure correctly (we had --with-expat patch, and >>> we >>> also saw "the trailing slash in template_dir definition in config.mak.in" >>> discussed fairly recently). You are much better off tweaking known >>> peculiarity of your platform in config.mak, when configure does not work >>> out of box for you. >> >> I've been building and installing multi-platform *nix software on >> various flavors for two decades now. "./configure && make && make >> install" has been the standard build process even before GNU. The whole >> point of >> autoconf/configure/make tools is to eliminate the need to manually tweak >> makefiles so that software is easily portable between platforms. > > ./configure is a generated script. Including it in the repository is not > something many projects do, since one of the things developers will be > working on is to change how that file is generated. Including it in the > release tar-balls is something every project (that uses autoconf) does, > since those are aimed at end-users. Reason that it should be included: * configure scripts usually are included. git was the first source code in a long time that I've seen without one * we have lots other files in git.git that are autogenerated (the documentation files, for example) * people are used to being able to do "./configure; make; make install" * It doesn't hurt anyone to do it. John -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
