Follow-up Comment #6, sr #111238 (group autoconf): [comment #5 comment #5:]
> This is a symptom of the tension between package maintainers and distros:
>
> 1) When package maintainers do a release, they test a specific tarball, with
> generated files from a specific autoconf version, a specific automake
> version, a specific GNU bison version, a specific GNU gperf version, a
> specific makeinfo version, a specific groff version, and so on. But then the
> distros say "we don't trust upstream tarballs any more, because of the xz
> backdoor drama", and regenerate everything with their own versions of
> autoconf, automake, bison, gperf, makeinfo, groff, etc.
Please do not tar and feather us all with the same brush! This is unreasonable
and *insulting*.
> 2) Distros typically ignore it when the upstream maintainer says "my package
> does not support autoreconf". They run autoreconf anyway.
This one I don't specially recall seeing at all. Distros aren't in the
business of intentionally failing to build a package. We don't care if the
"correct" command is autoreconf or autogen.sh, although the latter has a nasty
habit of hardcoding specific micro releases of the various tools -- versions
we may or may not package, and would rather backport an upstream patch to
support newer versions rather than add a deprecated package installing
autoconf-2.58 or whatever. So, like everyone else, we appreciate when
autoreconf works seamlessly.
I've submitted patches to autoreconf to solve the case where commonly used
tools such as the GLib ecosystem ones aren't invoked by autoreconf, and an
autogen.sh was the only thing that worked. Now autoreconf works too! But I
don't call that "ignoring what the upstream maintainer says".
> You (or we, in the GNU Build System) cannot solve this tension between
> package maintainers and distros.
I suppose that Zack has the option of pushing back against false
information...
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