rpm and config.{guess, sub} (was [aarch64 bugs] dpkg: Does not support aarch64 in f19 and rawhide bug #925276)

[Mathieu Bridon]

On Mon, 2013-06-17 at 16:57 +0200, Alec Leamas wrote:
> On 2013-06-17 16:43, Jerry James wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Björn Esser <bjoern.esser at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I completely agree to this. Using `autoreconf -fi` in %build or %prep
> >> should be mandatory in packages using autotools. This will surely avoid
> >> lots of possible problems caused by just injecting config.{guess,sub} by
> >> %configure.
>>
> > That would only work if the autotools had perfect backwards
> > compatibility.  They don't.  I maintain multiple packages where
> > "autoreconf -fi" with modern autotools fails due to use of obsolete
> > macros.
>
> Isn't the proper solution then to patch the config files to get rid of 
> the obsolete macros? Such patches should certainly be acceptable upstream.

Not necessarily, or at least not reasonably quickly.

Upstream might be running an older version of the Autotools on their
development machine, and not be interested in upgrading it (e.g they run
Debian Stable or RHEL).

So you'd still have to carry that patch downstream until they finally
upgrade and accept your patch, which can take years.


-- 
Mathieu