[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#1025739: Is an autogenerated configure shell script non-editable source (Was: Bug#1025739: hmmer2: missing source for configure)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Helmut,

IMHO this should be discussed more widely.

Am Thu, Dec 08, 2022 at 08:09:22PM +0100 schrieb Helmut Grohne:
> Control: tags -1 - moreinfo
> 
> On Thu, Dec 08, 2022 at 05:56:18PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > I agree that this configure script looks auto generated but IMHO it can
> > be considered machine readable and editable with some effort.  I could
> > imagine that it is hard to edit for your cross-building effort.
> > However, this is the first time a FTBFS bug is filed for the lack of
> > some configure.ac file.  Am I missing something our should this be
> > discussed on debian-devel list first since this might end up in a MBF.
> 
> This is not a FTBFS bug. It's a DFSG bug.

Sorry for the typo.  I've got that you claim its DFSG.

> Packages are so frequently rejected from NEW for this reason that it
> made it to the reject FAQ:
> 
> https://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html -> "Source missing"

I've seen rejections for compressed JS scripts so far and this item is
not unknown.

> I think the most prominent example is #762638.

This "prominent" example was heavily discussed and IMHO its not really
an example for the current case.  If you look at the configure file of
hmmer2[1] it surely claims that it is autogenerated.  However, its
perfectly simple and straightforward shell text with sensibly named
variables so it is editable code.  Calling this piece of shell source
code "missing source" is IMHO an over-interpretation of the letters of
DFSG.

I would consider asking upstream about this for sure but the code is in
maintenance mode and there is no Git repository to step back in history.
The only way to go would be to take configure.ac from a later version
and find out how it can be tweaked to create some working configure
file from it.  I do not consider my time well spent in doing so except
if there is some consensus here on the list that configure files without
configure.ac are "missing source".

Kind regards
    Andreas.

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/hmmer2/-/blob/master/configure

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