On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 11:47 +0200, Enrico Scholz wrote:
Ralf Corsepius <rc040203(a)freenet.de> writes:
> AM_MAINTAINER_MODE suppresses the deps we are discussing here.
>
> This allows people to get away with packages containing broken
> timestamps, which introduces risks to upstreams if not handled with
> care and is unhandy for upstream usage.
When you are upstream, you have probably mechanism/scripts to call
configure with special parameters (e.g. adding '-g3' to CFLAGS,
setting a writable '--prefix', setting another CC). Putting an
'--enable-maintainer-mode' there does not harm.
My problem is a bit
different (cf. below).
> I am upstream maintainer of a package, which uses
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE. The
> most frequently answered question related to building issues is: "Did you
> pass --enable-maintainer-mode?"
Reducing stability (-> occasional autotool invocations in uncontrolled
environments) and removing features (-> ability to patch configure) just
to avoid some support requests is a bad deal.
People (developers) are working on CVS check outs and wonder why the
Makefile don't do what they expect rsp. why their autotool-generated
files don't get updated, when rebuilding their works.
Cause: They forgot --enable-maintainer-mode.
Ralf