> Nowadays, the repo-tarball split is largely unnecessary, but the practice remains. I keep seeing this argument, but I don't understand why CI runners can't g

> Nowadays, the repo-tarball split is largely unnecessary, but the practice remains. I keep seeing this argument, but I don't understand why CI runners can't generate the configure script rather than offloading that onto the end user requiring them to have autotools/automake/autoconf/m4/etc If you've ever tried to fight with that on an decade old enterprise system, those tarballs with configure scripts in them are useful. They get generated with new tooling on modern distros, but run on ancient systems. Getting the right versions installed can be an absolute pain in the ass.