Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Remember, please don't use upstream-provided bootstrap unless necessary
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:19:49
Message-Id: 20080609211855.GC1965@nibiru.local
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Remember, please don't use upstream-provided bootstrap unless necessary by flameeyes@gmail.com (Diego 'Flameeyes' =?utf-8?Q?Petten=C3=B2?=)
1 * Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò <flameeyes@×××××.com> schrieb:
2
3 Hi,
4
5 > Upstream doesn't always know better for our setup (it may try to second
6
7 there are also a lot of other things, upstream tends not to know ;-P
8
9 > guess our settings by looking for particular automake/autoconf
10 > versions), it will show to the user information we don't care about,
11
12 ah, don't forget those upstreams (eg. mozilla) who are too lazy for
13 fixing their stoneage'd configure.in's for a more recent autoconf
14 version, instead invest enormous amounts of time in writing whole
15 books about why they're unwilling to have a look at ready-to-run
16 and well tested patches.
17
18 > almost all the bootstrap scripts I've seen don't even try to catch when
19 > a step in the rebuild fails, they mask the need for autotools, and as
20 > you don't inherit autotools eclass for running them, you usually forget
21 > to add the autoconf/automake dependencies. And it makes very difficult
22 > to track down which ebuilds do actually use autotools to track down if
23 > there are changes to do.
24
25 hmm, isn't it obvious that these scripts are just for the (upstream)
26 devs themselves ?
27
28 they belong into my (manual ;-)) "veryclean" stage when starting to
29 work on some package, same as ./configure, aclocal.m4, etc, etc ;-P
30 (for a clean start, I normally wipe out *everything* that's autogenerated)
31
32 > Let's not even start to talk about bootstrap scritps that run
33 > ./configure by themselves, those are just plainly evil.
34
35 ACK. We should instead ask the upstream for cleaned-up releases ;-)
36
37 Actually, I wouldn't even take the shipped ./configure scripts -
38 I *always* run the whole autoreconf chain on a fresh tree.
39
40 > Please note that sometimes the bootstrap script is used to add extra m4
41 > search directories and options like --foreign to automake. Well, here's
42 > the deal:
43 >
44 > - AT_M4DIR is the variable to use to pass extra m4 search directory to
45 > aclocal, no need for the bootstrap script;
46 > - eautomake takes care by itself to identify the cases where --foreign
47 > is needed (this usually means when some of the standard documentation
48 > files are missign);
49
50 I prefer to fix these broken configure.in's ;-P
51
52 > Also make sure that autotools gets not rebuilt through maintainer mode,
53 > that will make the configure run twice, wasting users' time, and is
54 > usually evil if you are using unpack to check for the generated
55 > configure (yes it happened to me a couple of time).
56
57 That strange "maintainer mode" is one of the things on my "to-rip-off"
58 list, along with the rules for regenerating the configure script.
59 (which sometimes tends to loop forever) ;-o
60
61
62
63 cu
64 --
65 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
66 Enrico Weigelt == metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
68 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
69 http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
70 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
71 http://patches.metux.de/
72 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
73 --
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