Re: autoreconf --force seemingly does not forcibly update everything

[Nick Bowler]

On 2024-04-10 16:36, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Is bootstrap intended to be reliable from within a tarball?  I thought
> the bootstrap script was not included in tarballs because it wasn't
> designed to be ran that way, and the way it is designed may not give
> expected results.  Has this changed, so we should recommend maintainers
> to 'EXTRA_DIST = bootstrap bootstrap-funclib.sh bootstrap.conf' so this
> is even possible?

Not including the scripts used to build configure in a source tarball
is a mistake, particularly for a GPL-licensed package.  The configure
script itself is clearly object code, and the GPL defines corresponding
source to include any "scripts to control [its generation]".

If you cannot successfully regenerate configure from a source tarball,
it is probably missing some of the source code for the configure script,
which is a problem if it was supposed to be a free software package.

Cheers,
  Nick