[sane-devel] autoconf and configure

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Ralph,

littlesincanada writes:

> Hi,
> I'm almost at the stage where I need to start updating the file
> structure of xsane to bring it up-to-date with modern practice.
>
> What is the thinking about the configure script itself?
> Many tar packages that I have seen use autotools to generate configure,
> but a pre-prepared configure script is included also.
>
> Is it the intention that autoconf is really only intended for use by the
> maintainer and source builders will use the provided configure script?
> I notice that sane-backends has a configure script checked into the repo.

With sane-backends-1.0.28 we have dropped all generated files from the
git repository[1].  People who clone the repository have to install the
various autofoo utilities and run ./autogen.sh before they can do any
development.  Our source tarballs include all the generated files (as
per GNU Standards[2], especially the Release Process[3]).

I think we should follow that direction for xsane as well.  But perhaps
we should get xsane's !1 merged first[4].

  [1]: https://gitlab.com/sane-project/backends/merge_requests/72
  [2]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html
  [3]: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Managing-Releases
  [4]: https://gitlab.com/sane-project/frontend/xsane/merge_requests/1

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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