On Fri, 2011-02-18 at 12:12 +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote: > Having autogen.sh as part of the tarball allows for a single set of > instructions on how to build the driver, regardless of whether it came > from > git or from a tarball. >
I have to disagree with that.
The single set of instructions on how to build the driver is in the
wacom package INSTALL file:
Basic Installation
==================
Briefly, the shell commands `./configure; make; make install' should
configure, build, and install this package. The following
more-detailed instructions are generic; see the `README' file for
instructions specific to this package.
Running ./configure does not require the 30+ tools in the toolchain, it
can be referred to
as a "pure build" scenario. This is how any GNU package should be built.
For those who are doing development from git, there is no "configure",
so it
must be created. Using autogen is fine, though issuing "autoreconf -vfi"
does the same.
In the old days, there were no autoreconf, all the programs had to be
invoked
separately with their options such as aclocal, autoconf, autoheader,
automake, etc...
For those doing development from a tarball, unless they need to change
configure.ac,
which is rare, they do not need to re-create the configuration. It was
never explained
to me how it is useful to write code from a tarball. No git, no commit,
no patch.
I found a couple of scenarios where using autogen as the universal way
of doing things
is bad:
Many web sites instruct users who want a later version to run
autogen. If the user
is missing one of the tool, or it's not at the minimum level, or
it's hacked-up,
problems show up and issues are raised where none really exists.
Build systems like build.sh or jhbuild key on the absence of
autogen to find out
if this a git vs tarball situation.
The autogen script is not part of the GNU packaging architecture and is
not shipped
in any GNU project. It is not mentioned in the INSTALL instruction. The
instructions
to build the wacom driver would now be different from the hundreds of
other GNU
packages out there. The autogen script have all (or almost) been removed
in X.Org.
If you were planning on writing instructions on building the driver (a
pure build),
I suggest you refer readers to INSTALL file. In there, it points to the
README file
for additional instructions.
In short, having autogen in the tarball will hurt users, not developers.
There are many
more users than developers. No developer ever got stranded because
autogen was
not in the tarball.
Gaetan
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