Re: make dist

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Thomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name> skribis:

> As »make dist« in some places just considers the current configuration,
> it really is flawed.  That's also the reason that you don't notice the
> missing files (but just do a diff of the tarball built by it and the
> source directory) -- they're not used in your configuration (for example,
> without console-client/ncursesw.c, no nfs/nfsd, only the x86 architecture
> in libthreads and pfinet),

These are makefile bugs that should be fixed, IMO (namely, add those
files that cannot be built to DIST_FILES.)

> and for the missing *.h files (such as libthreads/i386/cthreads.h),
> GCC is probably picking up those from the system installation's
> /usr/include (which definitely is not correct either).

There’s no /usr/include in Nix build chroots.

> Instead of fixing this system, I really think we should switch to
> using »git archive« and some pre-dist hooks (rebuild documentation,
> etc.).  Compare to what glibc is doing.  Any counter arguments?

FWIW I’m used to Automake, and I like that the distribution-making
process is part of the build system, because the build system already
has all the information needed (what should be part of the distribution,
what’s generated and how, what the dependencies are, etc.)

Surely, one could script around “git archive” to achieve the same
result, but I would find it less elegant, and in contradiction with GNU
practices.

A more interesting option would be to switch to Automake IMO.

Thanks,
Ludo’.