Re: how do distribute automake free code?

[Eric Blake]

On 06/20/2011 05:13 PM, Jim Edwards wrote:
> Eric,
> 
> On the first question I guess I didn't state it very well - what you
> describe is what I am doing.

Sounds like you are running into the classic debate of how much to
version control, as well as the problem of your version control system
corrupting timestamps on generated files.  Perhaps this portion of the
automake manual will give you some ideas:

http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#CVS

Personally, I'm of the camp that files generated by autotools should
_not_ be version controlled (witness autoconf.git); then I don't have to
deal with timestamp issues (but other developers have to have more tools
installed in order to bootstrap my projects when working from version
control); but I have also worked on projects where version-controlled
generated files are the norm (witness automake.git), and it is indeed
possible to guarantee sane timestamps in spite of version control
oddities as part of your bootstrap scripts.

> On the second I found that by adding arguments -c -i for libtoolize and -a
> -c for automake  in the bootstrap,
> I was able to add the additional files that make was looking for.   It seems
> that that takes care of it.

You may want to just use 'autoreconf -i' rather than direct libtoolize
and automake calls in your bootstrap script.

>   As for writing to the automake list instead of
> the
> autoconf list - wouldn't it make more sense to have a autotools list since
> they are all interrelated anyway?

Perhaps merging the 'libtool', 'automake', and 'autoconf' lists into a
new 'autotools' list might make sense (keeping the old names as aliases
to the new list), where it would consolidate general usage questions
about any of the three tools into a single location.  It would need
consensus from the three projects; would you care to raise that as a new
thread cross-posted to the appropriate lists?  For precedence, we
already have a shared 'autotools-announce' list.  I'm probably 60-40 in
favor of doing a list consolidation along those terms.

However, 'bug-libtool', 'bug-automake', 'bug-autoconf', as well as
'libtool-patches', 'automake-patches', and 'autoconf-patches', should
all remain separate lists (they really are three different projects, and
patches to one don't always affect the other).  And since we'll still be
stuck with redirecting bug reports, what's the harm in redirecting usage
questions rather than consolidating the usage aliases into one list?
Most of the active developers already hang out on all three lists, so
it's not that likely that misdirected mail is completely lost.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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