Re: please bring back program suffix for autoconf bin files

[Russ Allbery]

Mike Castle <address@hidden> writes:

> But, outside of originally broken packaging like that, what other type
> of local patches would cause similar rerunning all of the autotools?

Any patch to the configuration system.

For example, I patch XEmacs because it incorrectly prefers vendor Motif
over a locally installed version of Motif.

> And couldn't that be addressed by appropriate use of touch after patch?

Autoconf output is write-only.  One way or the other, I still have to be
able to run autoconf in order to get the correct configure script.

I wasn't particularly arguing for this proposal, although I rather like it
and would like it even more if Autoconf would autodetect what version is
required and run the right one the way that the Debian wrapper script
does.  Just arguing against the contention that no one other than
developers ever has to run Autoconf for a package.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>