Re: autogen?

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu>]

chl@tbit.dk writes:
> >>>>> "Jim" == Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com> writes:
> 
> Jim> The disadvantage is:
> Jim> - Building from CVS or a snapshot would now require autoconf, automake, 
> Jim>   and libtool, in addition to GCC and GNU Make, since the files they
> Jim>   generate would no longer be provided in the repository.
> 
> Not only will you need the tools, you'll need them in the correct
> version. Perhaps this less of a problem when automake has aged some,
> but still a concern.
> 
> Worse however is that not committing conf/makefiles to the repository
> looses you the ability to regenerate an old release, or even to
> recreate the situation at some arbitrary point in time.
> 
> The result of autogenerating these files are complex enough that
> trying to understand how a change in a generator affects the
> endproduct is diffcult enough, and lets not forget that guile is close
> to a dead duck without.
> 
> Some day somewhere somebody will need to go back in history. Lets not
> amputate the repository by leaving out essential bits of information.
> 

I think both of these objections are valid, but are adequately
addressed by mentioning the proper version of each the autotools to
use in HACKING and updating when you change. This way, if you want to
reproduce an old situation, you look at HACKING and see which versions
of the tools you should use, and users accessing CVS directly know
what version they need. (This is not necessarily an issue for
snapshots, and definitely not one for releases).

 - Maciej