On Fri, 17 Feb 2012, Paul Wise wrote: > The attached patch (that unfortunately was reject upstream) checks a > number of paths for newer versions and runs the newest one. The reason > for the rejection is not documented publicly, but was basically "It adds > more complexity than I would like." with existing workarounds suggested > as a replacement. > > This patch is useful for distributions like Debian that add new > architectures and then have to update config.sub and config.guess in > every single package that uses automake or have to workaround the > problem by adding code to each package to copy in the latest versions of > these scripts from another package containing the latest version of the > scripts (autotools-dev in Debian).
We really want the packages to retool during build, so that the build can pick up fixes to the tooling AND to force the package to be honest (i.e. no hidden changes to configure/makefile). Otherwise, it comes back from the grave to bite people who are doing security updates or NMUs, or taking over the package because the original maintainer disappeared. Also, any changes to config.guess and config.sub have to be vettoed against really nasty, really buggy, really crappy oldware. Have you managed to do that, or otherwise constraint yourself to stuff that had already to be working for config.sub/guess to work? It does look like you did, but I need to be certain about this one... upstream maintainers do develop using Debian and Ubuntu, and whatever we provide ends up also being distributed [outside of the packaging system] as part of upstream sources, to build on platforms that are far less sane than Debian or Ubuntu userspace. So, as you see, I am not sure it is a good idea to accept this patch. It is useless for all packages that do what we want them all to do in the first place (retool during build), and it is a deviation from upstream which might cause surprises to upstream developers of software that uses GNU config (config.sub/guess). I will wait for more comments before I make my mind. -- "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
