Re: Building SVN source failures: VPATH builds; Cygwin

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> From: Hans-Bernhard Bröker <address@hidden>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2017 21:58:36 +0100
> 
> > That just means the Makefile rules need some tweaking to DTRT.  The
> > solution is not necessarily removal of the files from the repository.
> 
> In the case at hand for the majority of files concerned, I'm quite 
> convinced it was.  Files that are built by 'configure' or 'make' should 
> never be distributed, neither in the repository nor in tarballs.

The "never" part is too dogmatic to my taste.  There's nothing wrong
with having such files in the repository, provided that (a) they don't
reflect the particular configuration of the system on which they were
produced, and (b) the Makefile rules are set correctly to regenerate
them when needed.

> Neither does it make much sense to have in SVN both an 'autogen.sh' 
> script and the files it generates (Makefile.in, mainly).

Of course it makes sense: if Makefile.am is modified, one needs
autogen.sh to reproduce the rest, otherwise autogen.sh is not needed.

> On Windows, being prepared to use 'configure' or the Makefile it 
> generates is every bit as exotic as having autoconf and autoamke.

I used to think that, but many complaints from others convinced me I
was wrong.  We should not make these decisions based only on our own
systems.

> An attempt to really accomodate Windows users would most likely end up 
> much closer to CMake than to anything found in GNU packages today.

If you ever used CMake seriously to build programs, you know that it
requires the same amount of tweaking to DTRT on WIndows as the
autotools.  TANSTAAFL.