Re: New build process?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com> writes:

> On Jul 26, 2011, at 2:47 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
>>> 
>>> I don't seem to be able to find instructions about this, and I haven't
>>> found anything relevant and recent in the emacs-devel archive.  Help,
>>> please!
>> 
>> INSTALL.BZR
>
> Suggest changing the name of this file.  Not everybody gets the source
> code via Bazaar.  When these inconvenient changes happened, I got
> caught out like Alan Mackenzie, since I wouldn't think of reading this
> file.
>
> Better yet, include a configure script that calls autogen.sh and then
> runs itself.  If people consider this an inconvenience w.r.t. the
> version control tool, then perhaps autogen.sh could generate
> configure.local instead.
>
> As others have said here, people expect to be able to do ./configure;
> make install.

"people" get a tarball, and then this works perfectly fine and is
usually described in INSTALL.  When working from a version control
system, it is the rule rather than the exception that generated files
_including_ ./configure are _not_ checked into the version control
system, and that there is a separate INSTALL.CVS file or similar.  The
"usual way" for installing from a tarball is "./configure && make
install", and the "usual way" for installing from a version control
system checkout is "./autogen.sh && ./configure && make install".

It is an unreasonable expectation that ./configure is checked into the
version control system if it is a generated file and not source code.
It has been this way for a long time in the Emacs source tree, and has
been a source for trouble for a long time.  And obviously it has lead to
bad expectations as well.

-- 
David Kastrup