[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#733193: Bug#733193: thunar: use dh-autoreconf for better new-port coverage

Colin Watson cjwatson at ubuntu.com
Tue Dec 31 00:44:44 UTC 2013


On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 01:09:03AM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 05:33:39PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 11:49:01PM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > > Unless we want to autoreconf each and every C package in Debian,
> > 
> > IMO every package using the autotools should autoreconf itself at build
> > time, yes.  I'm not the only one who thinks this;
> > /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/README.Debian.gz has been strongly
> > recommending it for at least four years.  I fixed all my own packages
> > some time ago, as have a number of other developers.
> 
> Then ask it to be included by default in debhelper instead of doing it
> manually in each package?

See recent discussions on debian-devel.  There are too many local
variations in how autoreconf needs to be run for it to be practical to
change globally.  For example, see this very patch.

> > Now, I know better than to advocate for it being a release-critical bug
> > or whatever until it's somewhat more widespread practice; but this is a
> > case that autoreconf-at-build-time would have avoided, so it's a good
> > excuse to introduce it to this package now to save problems next time.
> 
> Or introduce other ones, I guess. Afaict, that means diverting from the
> package generated by upstream. If it fixes immediate problems, then
> fine, but otherwise I prefer leaving it that way.

It's best practice in Debian to regenerate autotools files, and has been
for years.  There are just far too many issues caused by "living with
whatever crap upstream used", as the autotools-dev documentation
picturesquely puts it.

> > This doesn't make sense to me, I'm afraid.  dh_autoreconf arranges to
> > run autoreconf at the start of the build, so there's no reason to wait
> > for the libtool patches in question to be applied in Debian before you
> > apply my patch.  It is of benefit even without those patches since it
> > means that anyone who needs to patch your package's build system can do
> > so simply by patching the true source files, without having to figure
> > out how to regenerate things appropriately as well.
> > 
> > The port itself was announced in
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2013/09/msg00045.html.
> 
> Sure, but ping us when it's actually part of Debian?

Sorry, it's not realistic for me to track all these bugs individually.
Bringing up a port is hard enough without having to stop and ping
maintainers all the time ... the more it can be automated, the better,
and autoreconfing at build time is an important part of that automation.

In general this class of fix deals with other issues beyond just
ppc64el.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]



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