On Sun, Jul 4, 2021 at 2:19 PM Karl Berry <k...@freefriends.org> wrote: > > - I used the word "pure" in the sense of a pure function, > > Yes, I realized. > > My thought was that, suppose some other similar change is needed in the > future that changes what gets automatically distributed, or > prerequisites, or whatever. However, we would not want to change the > effect of "pure-dist", because of compatibility, even if theoretically > this hypothetical change was also about "purity". Then the name would > become more confusing than helpful. > > Therefore it seems better to me to describe what the option actually > does (dist-no-built-sources) than to come up with a general name, > even though it is (granted) prettier. > > static-dist isn't any different in that regard. I like pure-dist better > than static-dist, of the two. > > I hear you about long option names, but ... I don't see a perfect answer > here. > > By the way, looking at the current list of AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS, I think the > name should definitely start with "dist-", whatever else. > > - My actual preference would be to have this be the default option. > Might we have a path some day to a place where this is true, > possibly after a transition period? > > Well, the decision is Jim's, as the primary maintainer. IMHO, retaining > compatibility is more important than relatively minor behavior > improvements when it comes to behavior of long-established programs like > Automake. If the BUILT_SOURCES dependency had only started a year or two > ago, maybe, but it's a lot older than that. > > Changing the default, at behavior any time, will inevitably induce > significant hassle for maintainers of packages which depend, possibly > unknowingly, on the current behavior. Having been that maintainer (on > the receiving end) more times than I count for such gratuitous behavior > "improvements", I prefer not to inflict it myself. > > - I made a mistake: I added the tests, but I forgot to add them to the > list of tests. > > I'll add it, no problem there. Thanks for the heads-up. -k
Thanks to both of you. Let's go with dist-no-built-sources for the reasons Karl gave. Once the patch is fixed to reference the new tests from t/list-of-tests.mk, I saw only two other nits: - the copyright date in a new file should include only the current year - the test description should be updated (from copied file) to refer to the new test, e.g., # Ensure "dist-no-built-sources" option works as advertised. Switching names means references to "impure" are no longer appropriate, of course. In incidentally-related news, I found that make check now hangs on tests-environment-fd-redirect on Fedora 34, so I'm investigating that.
