2014-04-14 11:37 GMT+01:00 Santiago Vila <sanv...@unex.es>:
> On Sun, 13 Apr 2014, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
>
>> Source: wdiff
>> Version: 1.2.1-2
>> Severity: normal
>> Tags: patch
>> User: debian-de...@lists.debian.org
>> Usertags: autoreconf
>>
>> Dear maintainer(s),
>>
>> New ports in preparation (arm64/aarch64, openrisc/or1k, ppc64el)
>> require updates to config.{guess,sub} or {libtool,aclocal}.m4 files.
>>
>> dh-autoreconf can be used to get new libtool macros (needed now for
>> ppc64el) and update config.{sub,guess} for new arches (arm64/aarch64
>> and openrisc/or1k). See the following URL for more information:
>>
>>
>> https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/FTBFS#A2014-01-21_using_dh-autoreconf_during_the_build
>
> Sorry but I don't think that updating always the files at build time is a
> good idea.
>
> If you consider backports, updating the files *once* (before the
> build) is a little bit better, as the backported package will use the
> new development files in unstable. Moreover, that's what upstream
> author would do, updating the files before making a "release".
>
> If I use dh-autoreconf, then a build on stable will use the
> development files in stable (which may be old for a backport).
>
> So, in this case I'll refresh config.sub/config.guess and tell
> upstream to do the same.
That's an interesting point. I am not aware of disadvantages of this
approach, but there might be some.
Speaking strictly from the perspective of people working on new ports,
they/we will never use stable, or they/we can install the newer
version of autotools-dev in the systems used for building packages for
the new port (if these systems use stable).
That's a very minor problem to overcome, compared to that of asking
hundreds or thousands of maintainers to update the files in their
packages [1] [2] -- then waiting for maintainers to act, re-pinging,
and then in some cases fixing all of the packages not maintained.
Conversely, I don't think that anybody will buy a (say) arm64 hardware
and expect stable released the previous year to be usable in this
machine, if the hardware was not even available when the distribution
was released. Many other things will not support this hardware,
starting from the compiler and possibly libc and other fundamental
pieces.
Updating config.{guess,sub} by hand will help anyway, thanks.
Cheers.
[1]
https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/FTBFS#A2014-01-21_using_dh-autoreconf_during_the_build
[2]
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=autoreconf;users=debian-de...@lists.debian.org
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montez...@gmail.com>
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
