Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/devel/gettext-lib

[Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 12:26:10 +1200
David Sainty <dave%dtsp.co.nz@localhost> wrote:

> On 12/04/15 08:48, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 06:27:32PM +0000, Benny Siegert wrote:
> >> Module Name:       pkgsrc
> >> Committed By:      bsiegert
> >> Date:              Sat Apr 11 18:27:32 UTC 2015
> >>
> >> Modified Files:
> >>    pkgsrc/devel/gettext-lib: Makefile distinfo
> >> Added Files:
> >>    pkgsrc/devel/gettext-lib/patches: patch-gettext-runtime_configure
> >> Removed Files:
> >>    pkgsrc/devel/gettext-lib/patches: patch-gettext-runtime_configure.ac
> >>
> >> Log Message:
> >> Remove autoconf dependency. It turns out that autoconf indirectly depends
> >> on gettext-lib (via help2man), creating a circular dependency.
> > We generally avoid depending on autoconf if sanely possible. Patches to
> > configure.ac can be included anyway to make it easier to figure out what
> > a specific change does.
> >
> 
> If that is a general policy it should probably be documented.
> 
> Assuming no dependency cycles, I usually personally prefer to fix 
> configure.ac + rebuild because [at least in my head] the changes tend to 
> be more concise and it's less likely to change dramatically (or at all) 
> from release to release.

There's no way to know what version the user has of autoconf, m4,
installed m4 macros and god knows what else it might implicitly depend
on. Or ways to match that with versions the script is supposed to be
regenerated with. Even minor changes can lead to huge diffs and
hard-to-diagnose build problems. Best to avoid autoreconf for
one line fixes and try to push complex configure.ac changes upstream
instead.