From: Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>
To: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Autotools-generated 'configure' & 'Makefile.in' considered binaries?
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:04:34 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <9c2ca57d59672fc4f9ebc0230b08d8953030a456.camel@telenet.be> (raw)
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Hi guix,
Quite some packages in Guix use the Autotools system. In this system,
a 'configure.ac' and 'Makefile.am' script / makefile is written, from
which 'autoconf' & 'automake' generate a very long bash script and a
Makefile.in. Depending on the maintainer of the upstream package, this
'configure' and 'Makefile.in' are sometimes included in release
tarballs.
This seems in conflict with:
* (guix)Submitting patches: ‘Make sure the package does not use
bundled copies of software already available as separate
packages.’
Autotools packages have a 'config.guess' and 'config.sub' script
that need to be updated whenever there's a new architecture. As
such, for some packages, these need to be replaced for aarch64,
powerpc or risv64. There are also some packages with very old
configure scripts that don't support --build/--host/--target,
which could gain --build/--host/--target support by just
regenerating them.
This also makes ensuring a package does not contain any malware
much harder, because the configure script (and related files)
needs to be read in their entirity.
* When an upstream tarball contains .so, .dll, .a, etc. binaries,
they are removed downstream in a snippet. Why would the Autotools
be an exception?
For some ‘early’ packages (gcc, glibc, binutils, ...), there's a
circularity problem, so building 'configure' and 'Makefile.in' from
source might not always be possible, but WDYT of building 'configure' &
'Makefile.in' from source for packages where it does not result in
bootstrapping problems?
Greetings,
Maxime.
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next reply other threads:[~2022-03-30 12:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-03-30 12:04 Maxime Devos [this message]
2022-03-30 14:31 ` Autotools-generated 'configure' & 'Makefile.in' considered binaries? Zhu Zihao
2022-03-31 11:17 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 11:19 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 11:22 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 11:27 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-30 18:55 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-03-30 19:24 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 4:22 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-03-31 11:10 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 18:24 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-03-31 18:31 ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-31 20:11 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-04-01 8:58 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-04-01 10:03 ` Maxime Devos
2022-04-05 12:06 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-04-06 16:35 ` Maxim Cournoyer
2022-04-10 20:25 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-05-02 10:55 ` zimoun
2022-04-01 9:12 ` Jonathan McHugh
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-06-29 19:01 Maxime Devos
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