[Pkg-openmpi-maintainers] [Fwd: Re: debian/patches/99autoconf]

[Manuel Prinz]

Am Mittwoch, den 27.06.2007, 09:52 -0500 schrieb Dirk Eddelbuettel:
> Ok, now for the slow-witted folks in the corner like myself:
> -- why, ie what does 10opal* do ? Was there a bug report on it?

It compiles the assembler stuff in the opal directory with some sort of
stack protection. At least that is my understanding of it. (I just
started digging into that matter, I'm not really familiar with it.)

I've not seen a bug report on that. The patch was done by Florian. I can
ask him or just try to understand it. I kind of have the feeling that
the patch is not needed at all.

> -- why does it have to re-applied in a second patch ?

I don't get what you mean by "re-applied"?

> <grin> So *WHAT* is the actual difference?    We have been circling this
> question for a few days now...

I'm totally confused about this whole stuff now. Probably the answer is
short and simple: none.

> | if there's anything we can do about it to shrink the patch in size.
> | 
> | Running autoconf during the build process would modify some files and
> | I'm wondering if that would break some QA tests like rebuilding the same
> | package twice, since debian/rules clean is expected to take back any
> | modifications done to the sources. Can we keep track of that when we run
> | autoconf at build time? That was the intension of the patch because one
> | can easily deapply it.
> 
> I tried to answer this in a previous email via
> 
>     But let me just try to think out loud here:
> 
>     1)  debian/patches/99* modifies some .am/.ac files
>     2)  before calling configuire, we call autoconf/automake as needed
> 
>     3)  we build as usual thanks to 1) and 2)
> 
>     4)  clean removes the generated configure script
>     5)  dpatch unapplies the diffs from 1) and we're fine
> 
>     Now, all of that is of course hypothetical unless we get the set of changes
>     to the .ac/.am files back. Do you still have them?  
> 
> So far nobody has said that this can't work so...

I kind of misunderstood it in the first read, I guess. I think the
overall procedure might work as expected, as long as only configure is
affected by running autoconf/automake.

Nevertheless, I have increasing doubts that we need the 10opal* nor the
99* patch at all. They seem to be kind of useless, unless I'm missing
the obvious. But I have to do a little more reading to understand the
issue. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/gnu-stack.xml seems to be
related and somewhat interesting in this respect.

Best regards
Manuel