madmurphy wrote:
P.S. *“If I remember correctly, Autoconf also falls back to hardlinks or copying the files if the system does not support symbolic links.”*: Same goes for my patch. I use $(LN_S) for creating the links, and that falls back to hardlinks when ln -s is not supported.
The difference is that your patch will fall back if the /development/ system does not support symlinks, while AC_CONFIG_LINKS will fall back if the /build/ system does not support symlinks.
Typically, the development system /will/ support symlinks, so symlinks will be recorded in the distribution tarball. The GNU coding standards are vehemently against this because such a tarball looks fine to the developer, but cannot even be properly unpacked on a system that does not support symlinks.
What can EXTRA_DIST_LINKS achieve that AC_CONFIG_LINKS cannot? -- Jacob
