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