Hijacking this thread originally about
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Autoconf_271
What is the current thinking in Fedora about always running
"autoreconf -i" during builds that use autotools?
In Debian it's been recommended for a long time:
https://wiki.debian.org/Autoreconf
I maintain a few packages where I attempt to toggle autoreconfing
based on whether patches touch build files. If a downstream patch is
applied which touches any of configure.ac, Makefile.am, or several
other files, then the build will attempt to run autoconf/automake and
usually fail. These packages have:
# If there are patches which touch autotools files, set this to 1.
%global patches_touch_autotools %{nil}
%if 0%{patches_touch_autotools}
BuildRequires: autoconf, automake, libtool
%endif
%prep
...
%if 0%{patches_touch_autotools}
autoreconf -i
%endif
This is a kind of optimal solution, but also hard to get right - I
often find myself forgetting to set the %global correctly after
applying or removing downstream patches.
The cons of always autoreconfing are that it slows down builds,
sometimes considerably. It also could fail - I noticed that autoconf
2.71 has several incompatibilities with the most widely used autoconf
(2.69).
Rich.
--
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