Re: calling autoreconf and minimizing rebuilds

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello David,

* David Byron wrote on Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 07:03:20PM CEST:
> 
> Now I think I'm left with just one dilemna.  The docs say I need to run
> autoreconf -fvi after an autotools upgrade.  I think that means my helper
> Makefile (the one that runs autoreconf, makes a build directory, runs 
> configure
> and make) needs to run autoreconf -fvi to be safe, yes?
> 
> What's involved in making autoreconf smart enough to deal with autotools
> upgrades without using -f?

Well, autotools upgrades should be seldom, right?  (Unless you're
testing it, that is...)

You could just invoke a different rule then, or something like
  make AUTORECONFFLAGS=--force

(and put $(AUTORECONFFLAGS) in your rule).  Surely that still requires
you to know just _when_ the system's autotools were upgraded.  Not
always easy to find out, with automatic package updates and the like...
but then again, autotools really do expect that you do consciously 
upgrade in your packages (e.g., read the NEWS entries of the upgraded
tools).

Cheers,
Ralf