Suggested packaging guideline: avoid running autoreconf

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Sun Oct 12 10:50:34 UTC 2008


On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 02:07:59PM -0400, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> So what are those pitfalls? By running autoreconf, the RPM build becomes
> exposed to different versions of autoconf, automake, and libtool than
> were used by the upstream developer to create the upstream source
> package.  Newer versions of these tools have the potential to introduce
> incompatibilities, breaking the RPM build.

This all seems very theoretical to me.  Just because it has happened
this once is unfortunate, but you have to weigh that against the
convenience of running auto{conf,reconf} after a patch to configure.ac
which is about to go upstream anyway.

I don't mind such a guideline, but don't make it mandatory, and
emphasize that patches to configure.ac/Makefile.am should go upstream
a bit more urgently than normal.

Rich.

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