On Tue, 29 May 2012, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
On Tuesday 2012-05-29 15:33, Richard Guenther wrote:
To check what the automake 1.12 update would break, I gave it a run in openSUSE:Factory:Staging and this is the list of build failures in Staging that is not happening in openSUSE:Factory. With the new automake, pkglib variable is now a reserved keyword. Here is how you fix it.[...]
The "fix" is of course to stop doing autoreconf in spec files. Upstream decided on the automake/autoconf version it uses (well, at least if they are shipping autogenerated files, which they should). So first try that (check that SUSE local patches do properly edit both source and generated files).
I find patches touching autogenerated files unwieldy to maintain.
Why exactly?
Running autoreconf is, in many cases, not a problem, and upstream developers should be asked to try tuning their software to make it work with newer autotools suites, just like compiling with libfoo-devel-1.24 when the actual requirement that has been specified in the INSTALL/README reads "libfoo >= 1.23".
Well, "in many cases" - apart from those in the list that started
this thread.
autotools are not trying to maintain compatibility, so what works
with newer versions does not work with older versions. At least
you create issues with building a package for multiple distributions
if you use autoreconf. More so if you don't.
So, avoid it when possible.
Richard.
--
Richard Guenther