Suggested packaging guideline: avoid running autoreconf

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Rather than reply in depth to any of the posts which are in this thread,
I think I'll just say that both patching and regenerating autotools have
flaws.  I would vote against specifying that patches are better than
running autoconf commands or vice versa in Fedora packages.  I would
support a page written that outlined:

1) The minimal steps that a package maintainer needs to do when a change
to configure.ac/Makefile.am is necessary.
  A) Fix Makefile.am and configure.ac
  B) Generate patch
  C) Submit patch upstream
  D) Regenerate as necessary until patch is integrated upstream
2) How to create and continuously update patches to the generated files
and the gotchas involved with doing things this way and what the
maintainer should do to mitigate them.
3) Gotchas involved with rerunning autotools and what the maintainer
should do to mitigate them.

Neither of the two alternatives 2 or 3 is without major flaws so
advising maintainers that one or the other is the correct way is not
something I'll vote for.

-Toshio

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