Re: Configuration management Debian-Automake-autoconf

[William Pursell]

Aslak Johannessen wrote:

> To make autoconf automake and dpkg-buildpackage run one needs to edit 
> and type information into many different files. Mainly Makefile.am 
> configure.in and debian/control. Much of this information is duplicated 
> and the "need" for a centralized configuration file for each project is 
> wished for.

I have recently been putting all of the relevant information in
configure.ac, and letting configure build the package files.
For example, debian/control.in will hold lines of the form:
Description: @PACKAGE_SUMMARY@
@PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION_DEB@

and package_name.spec.in holds similar text (PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION_DEB
is AS_SUBST_FILE'd with leading spaces, PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION_RPM
contains no such spaces, and both get filtered through fmt
from free form text in configure.ac).  A few m4
macros do the job of specifying the relevant details.
And then Makefile.am contains:

@MY_TARGETS@

which generates suitable targets from rpm, srpm, deb, etc.

So far, I'm very happy with the setup.  I've only been
doing this for a few months, and am somewhat worried that
in 6 months it's going to burn me.  There is a reasonable
point to be made that the packaging should be seperate
from the source....but I haven't been burned yet.
(I strongly welcome arguments from people with more experience
about how this is going to burn me in the future.)