Re: Autoconf with Debian patches

[Denis Ovsienko via tcpdump-workers <tcpdump-workers () lists tcpdump org>]

> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
> From: Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info>
>
> Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2023 16:51:56 +0000
>
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 17:13:20 -0800
> Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 6, 2023, at 3:31 PM, Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > It is the latter, and a custom Autoconf seems an unreasonable
> > > requirement for contributing.  
> >
> > Reasonable, or unreasonable?
>
> Unreasonable, if it is more complicated than installing an Autoconf
> package using the package manager of the OS.
>
> > Whatever version is chosen as the standard autoconf, if the goal is
> > to have the version of the configure script in the repository always
> > be generated by the standard autoconf, some users will have to build
> > and install that version if they will be changing the configure
> > script, and, for other contributions, they'll either have to build or
> > install that version or they will have to take care not to check in
> > the configure script if they haven't changed configure.ac or
> > aclocal.m4.
> >
> > (By the way, have other Linux distributions applied the same changes
> > that Debian and its derivatives have?  If not, then users of those
> > distributions would be in the same situation as macOS and FreeBSD
> > users.)
>
> I do not remember to what extent these patches have propagated beyond
> Debian and Ubuntu.  Maybe somebody else has other distributions ready to
> check?
>
> > > Or the --runstatedir and LARGE_OFF_T bits between releases could
> > > appear and disappear at random  
> >
> > Meaning we let users check in the configure script in whatever form
> > it exists on their machine?
>
> Yes.  The obvious drawbacks of that would be lowering signal-to-noise
> ratio in the diffs and potentially making subsequent git-cherry-pick
> more likely to fail due to merge conflicts.
>
> > > until it is a release time, then the standard
> > > could be enforced as and if necessary.  
> >
> > I.e., part of the process of making a release would be regenerating
> > the configuration file using Debian autoconf and checking in the
> > regenerated version.?
>
> Yes.  This bit looks relatively simple.
>
> -- 
>     Denis Ovsienko
>
> --- End Message ---
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