Re: New build process?

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>    Sure, but having to run autogen.sh on a project that's just been checked out of
>    version control is also very common in the free software world, and our actual
>    source tarballs do contain pre-built autoconf scripts.  The problem with a
>    self-replacing configure script is that, as you mentioned, it'd be hard to tell
>    bzr to version the placeholder script, but ignore the generated one; solving
>    this problem by using a nonstandard name for the generated `configure'  script
>    would be surprising.  I think our current approach is fine.
>
> We could call the current configuration script `configure-internal'.
> Then have a small `configure' script that checks whether the
> `configure-internal' file exists and is up to date, and if not,
> generates it.  Then it would run `configure-internal'.
>
> This would DTRT in all cases, wouldn't it?
>

Lets not over engineer it! As far back as I can remember, emacs
sources from the version control repository had an additional step
that had to be completed ini order to generate the  configure script.
Previously, you ran autoget and now you run ./auttogen.sh. Previously,
people would get into problems if their autoconf tools werre an older
version that supported by the current configs for emacs - the new
method now tests to make sure the build tools satisfy version
restrictions, which I think is also an improvement.

The real issue here is whether INSTALL.BZR is an appropriate name for
the information that alerts people that you need to take extra steps
when building form sources taken from the version control repository.
Perhaps we can come up with a better name - though I'm not sure what.
'build-from -bzr.txt may be too long and won't help those who get the
sources form git. I find it hard to judge as I knew about the change
after it was announced on this list and didn't have to 'find it' from
the doc files, but I can understand how you would miss INSTALL.BZR.

Tim