On 2012-02-24 09:12 -0700, Eric Blake wrote: > On 02/24/2012 08:09 AM, Nick Bowler wrote: [...] > > Automake should at least add user write permissions to all files in > > distdir prior to running dist-hook (and hence prior to generating the > > distribution tarball). > > Automake must not add write permissions to files that were intended to > be shipped as read-only. For example, coreutils intentionally converts > generated-but-distributed files to read-only, so that users are more > likely to notice that they should edit the source that generates the > file, and not the generated file itself.
This sounds to me like a weird special case. Coreutils would still work correctly if the files were writable (otherwise it wouldn't build at all on some filesystems). Generated files should also have a statement to that effect in them, if at all possible. Regardless, I think it's a bad idea and frustrating for users to have any read-only files in a source tarball at all. > So how do you propose to tell automake which files are supposed to be > read-only, vs. those that should be writable even if the tarball was > re-created from a read-only srcdir? With my above proposed solution, the way to do this would be to use a dist-hook to remove the write permissions from the relevant files at "make dist" time. Cheers, -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)
