Autotools modernization in GNOME

[Cody A.W. Somerville]

Hello Robert,

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Robert Ancell <robert.ancell at gmail.com>wrote:
<snip>

> - Patches that modify configure.ac or Makefile.am(s) - we then need a
> second patch to update configure and Makefile(s).  Ideally we'd like
> to regenerate these before each package build but autotools version
> mismatches tend to stop this from working reliably.  I don't know if
> there is a good solution for autotools though.
>

A lot of developers do regenerate these files reliably by running
./autogen.sh or autoreconf or CDBS autotools magic in debian/rules. I
personally think its silly to patch a file like configure.ac or Makefile.am
if you're not going to regenerate the autotool files as it effectively makes
your patch to those files pointless. Its also painful to patch the
autogenerated autotool files themselves as you need to refresh the patches
every time those files get regenerated making it more painful if you want to
do a quick build of say simple-scan from trunk. ;)

Cheers,

-- 
Cody A.W. Somerville
Software Systems Release Engineer
Foundations Team
Custom Engineering Solutions Group
Canonical OEM Services
Phone: +1-781-850-2087
Cell: +1-613-401-5141
Email: cody.somerville at canonical.com
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