Dealing with autotools

[Russ Allbery]

Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org> writes:

> The way I figured so far is this:
>
>  1. git-import-dsc --pristine-tar
>  2. branch off upstream and create a topic branch
>  3. do my changes and test them
>  4. commit only the files that I have changed, and not the files that
>     autotools has regenerated.  This could be a bit cumbersome, but it
>     can be automated with something like:
>       git checkout aclocal.m4 configure `git ls-files -c |grep .in\$`

I think if you add a .gitignore file on topic branches that modify the
Autoconf files.  I think that will do the same thing for you.

> When packaging, I'm undecided on these two options:
>  1. Build-depend on automake and let it rebuilt itself at 'make' time

Definitely the right solution IMO.  This is what I do with all of my
packages.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>