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The letter mentions that "building an Autotools-based project directly from its VCS checkout is often significantly harder than building it from a tarball relea
by Sniffnoy 6y ago
The letter mentions that "building an Autotools-based project directly from its VCS checkout is often significantly harder than building it from a tarball release, and may involve tracking down and installing any number of unusual tools."
Why would that be? They both just seem like a source distribution to me... why would there be a difference? Can anyone explain this?
- db48x 6y agoThe tarball distribution includes the output of the Automake and Autoconf tools (the Makefile.in and configure.sh files, respectively), while building from a VCS checkout does not. Thus, building from a checkout requires extra steps and software that you may not already have ready to hand.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jsmith45 6y agoA source tallball already has the Makefile.in and configure script pre-generated, along with a few other autotools generated files. These expect `make`, the compiler, and needed libraries are installed, and some other generic unix tools, but do not expect users to have any GNU specific software installed. (Like the autotools). The source repositories typically do not have these already generated (since checking in generated files is frequently frowned upon), and building them often require getting the right version of autoconf/automake/etc installed, as a different version may not be fully compatible.
- jjgreen 6y agoI used to not include autoconf generated artefacts in my repos, but with .gitattributes making them sort-of invisible and the reduction in setup aggravation for other devs, I've completely changed my mind.