Marco d'Itri writes ("Re: Bug#579799: debian/patches/configure-hostname patches
configure not .in !"):
> On Apr 30, Ian Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The patch debian/patches/configure-hostname edits configure, which is
> > the output of autoconf, and does not change the source file
> > configure.in. This is wrong because the change will be undone if
> > autoconf is rerun for any reason.
>
> Why should autoconf be rerun?
If configure.in should be changed for any reason. Users are supposed
to be able to modify Debian packages and rebuild them.
configure.in is the source code for configure.
> > Any changes should be made to configure.in. Replacement patch
> This will force depending on autoconf, which would usually not be
> needed.
I agree that we shouldn't depend on autoconf. Rerunning autoconf
during the package build is irritating and fragile.
There are however at least three other options:
1. Make the configure-hostname patch contain both the existing
hand-edited patch to configure _and_ the patch to configure.in
which I've just supplied.
2. Rerun autoconf once by hand whenever configure.in is changed, and
have the configure-hostname patch contain the resulting diffs for
both configure and configure.in. This is easy but it will mean
that the configure-hostname will be rather large because it contains
the differences which are due to differences in autoconf version.
3. Like 2., but also make a separate patch "rerun-autoconf" which
consists _just_ of rerunning autoconf. That will mean that
the configure-hostname patch contains only the relevant diff.
Personally I would prefer 2 or 3 because I can't be bothered to
manually edit an automatically-generated file. But 1 is
straightforward in this case.
Ian.
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