Re: Change to bzr build instructions

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

>>> So we should either be more careful about such dependencies in
>>> copy_autogen, or maybe try and get copy_autogen to set
>>> "enable-maintainer-mode=off".
>> I suppose it could do something like that, but I don't know if it is a
>> good idea. I really don't recommend the use of the copy_autogen script
>> at all, except very much as a last resort, so I wouldn't want to see it
>> get too fancy.
>
> I don't think we want to get too fancy, indeed.  The `touch' trick seems
> sufficient for now.

To elaborate, if the autogen/configure script is one with
maintainer-mode = off by default, then if someone uses it, they won't
get any prompting to update configure if configure.in changes in the
repository. At least with the current situation, they will get an error
about missing autotools, which will hopefully prompt them to run
copy_autogen again.


On this subject, what to do about maintainer-mode in releases?
At present, I put a note in admin/make-tarball.txt saying that the
configure in a release tarfile should be generated with maintainer-mode
off.

i) It's rather poor to have to remember to change that.

ii) Is it actually necessary to make such a distinction?
If configure.in etc are not changed, it does not matter, and if someone
does edit configure.in, arguably they _should_ get an updated configure.
This seems to be what automake recommends now:

http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/automake/maintainer_002dmode.html

(or is it actually recommending removing the option altogether, and
having it always on?)