A Cry For Sanity

[Andrew Haley]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> 2008/6/26 Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com>:
>> Andrew John Hughes wrote:
>>> Is there a particular reason we keep generated files (configure,
>>> aclocal.m4, Makefile.in) in the repository?  I ideally like to remove
>>> them for the following reasons:
>> It's much easier for a person who just wants to download and build
>> not to have to regenerate the auto* scripts.  autotools are notoriously
>> sensitive to having the exact versions installed.  If we check in the
>> generated scripts they do not have to run auto* locally.  It's about
>> lowering the barrier to entry: if we don't check in the generated
>> scripts it'll be much harder for people to get started.
>>
> 
> It's this sensitivity that also swings it the other way from me; I've
> had to be selective
> on which systems I alter IcedTea to avoid drastically changing the autogenerated
> files due to version changes in the autotools.

So what?  As long as the files still work that doesn't matter.  No-one
needs to look at the diffs between autogenerated files.

> As for people getting started, hacking on IcedTea pretty much requires
> having the
> autotools as most of the changes are to Makefile.am and configure.ac.
> If you're just talking
> about building, then that's why we have releases.

That's a bad attitude problem: the source tree is for us developers,
and mere mortals get to use the releases we've handed down from
Mount Olympus.

>> Now, one other thing: we should not regenerate the scripts with a
>> simple configure and make.  If someone wants to change the
>> generated scripts, that should be a *deliberate act*.
> 
> Then blame whoever turned on maintainer mode, because that happens
> with IcedTea but not GNU Classpath.

Well, we should fix that straight away.

>>> Anyone capable of
>>> installing Mercurial can surely also install the autotools?
>> That's an attitude problem.  There are far more people building
>> than merging, and you're favouring the core developers, thus
>> raising the barrier to entry.
> 
> I wasn't talking about merging.  Getting a non-release copy of IcedTea
> means you have to have downloaded the source tree to begin with.

And that's already hard enough, so why not make it harder?  Sheesh.

Andrew.