On Wed, 3 Apr 2024 at 14:59, Joel Sherrill <j...@rtems.org> wrote: > > Another possible issue which may be better now than in years past > is that the versions of autoconf/automake required often had to be > installed by hand. I think newlib has gotten better but before the > rework on its Makefile/configure, I had a special install of autotools > which precisely matched what it required. > > And that led to very few people being able to successfully regenerate. > > Is that avoidable? > > OTOH the set of people touching these files may be small enough that > pain isn't an issue. >
For binutils/gcc/gdb we still have to use specific versions which are generally not the distro's ones. So indeed, the number of people having to update autotools-related files is relatively small, but there are other files which are regenerated during the build process when maintainer-mode is enabled (for instance parts of the gcc documentation, or opcodes tables in binutils, and these are modified by more people. Thanks, Christophe > --joel > > On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 5:22 AM Jan Beulich via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote: >> >> On 03.04.2024 10:57, Richard Biener wrote: >> > On Wed, 3 Apr 2024, Jan Beulich wrote: >> >> On 03.04.2024 10:45, Jakub Jelinek wrote: >> >>> On Wed, Apr 03, 2024 at 10:22:24AM +0200, Christophe Lyon wrote: >> >>>> Any concerns/objections? >> >>> >> >>> I'm all for it, in fact I've been sending it like that myself for years >> >>> even when the policy said not to. In most cases, the diff for the >> >>> regenerated files is very small and it helps even in patch review to >> >>> actually check if the configure.ac/m4 etc. changes result just in the >> >>> expected changes and not some unrelated ones (e.g. caused by user using >> >>> wrong version of autoconf/automake etc.). >> >>> There can be exceptions, e.g. when in GCC we update from a new version >> >>> of Unicode, the regenerated ucnid.h diff can be large and >> >>> uname2c.h can be huge, such that it can trigger the mailing list size >> >>> limits even when the patch is compressed, see e.g. >> >>> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2023-November/636427.html >> >>> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2023-November/636426.html >> >>> But I think most configure or Makefile changes should be pretty small, >> >>> usual changes shouldn't rewrite everything in those files. >> >> >> >> Which may then call for a policy saying "include generate script diff-s, >> >> but don't include generated data file ones"? At least on the binutils >> >> side, dealing (for CI) with what e.g. opcodes/*-gen produce ought to be >> >> possible by having something along the lines of "maintainer mode light". >> > >> > I'd say we should send generated files when it fits the mailing list >> > limits (and possibly simply lift those limits?). >> >> Well, that would allow patches making it through, but it would still >> severely increase overall size. I'm afraid more people than not also >> fail to cut down reply context, so we'd further see (needlessly) huge >> replies to patches as well. >> >> Additionally - how does one up front determine "fits the mailing list >> limits"? My mail UI (Thunderbird) doesn't show me the size of a message >> until I've actually sent it. >> >> > As a last resort >> > do a series splitting the re-generation out (but I guess this would >> > confuse the CI as well and of course for the push you want to squash >> > again). >> >> Yeah, unless the CI would only ever test full series, this wouldn't help. >> It's also imo even more cumbersome than simply stripping the generated >> file parts from emails. >> >> Jan
