On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 07:29:04PM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote: > > > > ## Building from source > > > > +Building from source requires additional packages. On rpm based system > > +use:
Either "On an rpm based system use" or "On rpm based systems use" sounds better > [2] > "Required for building from git, optional for building from tarballs:" > > I *think* autoconf is only needed for the "autoreconf" step, which is > specific to building from git; it is presumably not needed for building > from a tarball. > > I believe the same applies to automake. I've checked latest tarball > <https://download.libguestfs.org/libnbd/1.15-development/libnbd-1.15.13.tar.gz>; > it contains both "Makefile.am" files and "Makefile.in" files. According > to the comments in the "Makefile.in" files, automake generates > Makefile.in from Makefile.am, and "Makefile.in" is the input file for > ./configure. So I think at least in theory we could technically drop the > "Makefile.am" files from the tarball. Either way, automake should only > be necessary when building from a git checkout, not when building from a > tarball. > > I guess (?) libtool is required in both cases though. The intent of the GNU folks is that the three autotools (autoconf, automake, and libtool) are developer-only (they all require perl and GNU m4, things that aren't necessarily available on non-developer machines), and therefore 'make dist' packages enough of their output into the tarball that you do not have to have any of those tools available to build the tarball. > > I'm not familiar with autotools internals, so I can't say anything > definitive here; I guess I'd propose putting autoconf and automake under > [2], and libtool under [1]. Rich, Eric? Libtool should also be in [2]; if it has shifted into [1], that's a bug that should reported to the upstream libtool folks. > > Again, sorry that I didn't think this through under v1 already. > > Laszlo > -- Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer Red Hat, Inc. +1-919-301-3266 Virtualization: qemu.org | libvirt.org _______________________________________________ Libguestfs mailing list Libguestfs@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs