Re: Don't distribute auto*tools output; do distribute autoreconf input

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 05/10/2012 09:14 PM, Paul Elliott wrote:
> I want the people that receive my tarball to do autoreconf. Their system's
> autoconf-archive may be more up-to date than mine.
This is a pretty questionable approach.

In particular, this way,
* you are forcing your users to install sufficiently compatible versions 
of the autotools and their requirements.
This can be a tedious or close to impossible task on some systems and 
carries quite significant risks to a user's installation.

* you are exposing your users to the risks of incompatiblities between 
the autotools and their infrastructure and your autotool based 
configuration files.

You might not like it, but everybody who is maintaining "less than 
trivial" autotool based configurations knows that each autotool release 
is (sometimes deliberately some times accidentially) to some extend 
incompatible to its predecessors, which in practice means 
"autoreconf'ing" with different versions comes with a non-neglibile risk 
at breaking something.

To cut a long story short: What you are trying to do is against the 
spirit of the autotools. I recommend to avoid it.

Ralf