Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: cygwin's autoconf? From: Robert Collins To: Soren A Cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com In-Reply-To: References: <3DE8CDE5 DOT 8060307 AT lapo DOT it> <012101c2987f$67c9eb70$78d96f83 AT pomello> <3DE8E77D DOT 3000603 AT lapo DOT it> <3DE9114C DOT 1070309 AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu> <3DE9E769 DOT 7010104 AT lapo DOT it> <3DEA4653 DOT 10401 AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu> Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-xPdSpV2zEv9YC0pO/izJ" Date: 02 Dec 2002 20:21:57 +1100 Message-Id: <1038820917.2953.13.camel@lifelesswks> Mime-Version: 1.0 --=-xPdSpV2zEv9YC0pO/izJ Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Mon, 2002-12-02 at 11:36, Soren A wrote: > At the very LEAST, something that does what AM_MAINTAINER_MODE causes,=20 > should have been the *default* for all autotool'd packages, and only by=20 > significant contortions should it have been made possible to cause all th= at=20 > "default" behavior to get activated. But instead it's the other way aroun= d,=20 > and users are at the mercy of package maintainers' ignorance or awareness= =20 > of the importance of (at the very MINIMUM) placing AM_MAINTAINER_MODE in=20 > their configuration file. Soren, please don't rant on the wrong list. Firstly, few people here are autotool gurus, and thus your erroneous statements may go uncorrected (see below for the correction). Secondly, this is a CYGWIN list, not a autotool design philosophy list. Now, for the problem reported.... the root problem here is *NOT* autotools brokenness. It's CVS being broken (unless I'm seriously mistaken). The autotools very carefully set datestamps on the files that depend on each to ensure they don't rebuild automatically on user machines. CVS records the files as all having the datestamp of the commit AFAIK... I've seen this behaviour before. There are three solutions, none of which need AM_MAINTAINER_MODE. 1) Commit the generated files into CVS in date order, to preserve the semantics of the dependency graph. 2) Give the *users* tarballs to download, generated via 'make dist' which enforces the date stamps as well. 3) Remove all the autotool generated files from CVS, tell developers or hacking-users to bootstrap their CVS based copy, and all other users to get a nightly snapshot (created via make dist). (Best of all options, IMO). AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is dangerous because it can easily lead to dependency problems when a user patches some autotool file, and then doesn't run the appropriate autotool to update. So, avoid AM_MAINTAINER_MODE whenever possible. 'Nuff said, getting off the shoebox now. Rob --=20 --- GPG key available at: http://users.bigpond.net.au/robertc/keys.txt. --- --=-xPdSpV2zEv9YC0pO/izJ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQA96yY1I5+kQ8LJcoIRAvhnAKCn3dH8E+8MlKNHb3TCxNtLrDqdjACdFo2p V2RLLiufNHbYl/Fo82YLcZU= =Y7Ng -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-xPdSpV2zEv9YC0pO/izJ--