[debhelper-devel] Bug#733045: debhelper: Can debhelper make autotools-dev updating default behaviour?

[Russ Allbery]

Wookey <wookey at wookware.org> writes:

> Debian would be much improved in this regard if the default debhelper
> set of things run included the dh_autotools-dev rules. Individual
> packages wouldn't need patching if they already used debhelper or dh -
> it would just work. Overrides could be added to deal with the unusual
> cases, and a --without autotools-dev to disable it.

I'm generally in favor of this as long as there's some easy way for
dh-autoreconf to turn off this functionality in favor of its more
comprehensive approach.  (Personally, I use dh-autoreconf for everything
and think that's the superior option, but I understand why people don't
always want to do that.  Some packages have a history of not cleanly
rebuilding with later versions of Autoconf and Automake.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>