Re: [patch]: automatically buiding rpm (and others) with automake

[Simon Perkins]

Christophe Tronche wrote:
> Ok, the week-end is over, and I had promised something, so here it is.
> ...

All looks very cool.


> In the top Makefile.am, put
> 
> AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = package-rpm
> 
> In the configure.ac, chances are that you've something like:
> 
> AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(autopack, 0.1.1)
> 
> You've to add this (for example):
> 
> AP_INIT_AUTOPACK(An automake package generation module,
>         0,
>         GPL,
>         Applications/Multimedia,
>         Christophe Tronche <address@hidden>,
>         http://gnu.org/automake/,
>         [This is an extension to automake to let make build
>         effortlessly (hopefully !) packages such as RPM, .deb, System
>         V, etc... packages. To use this, put AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS =
>         package-xxx in your Makefile.am])
>
> The first parameter is a short (one-line) description of the package,
> the 2nd ("0") is the package version,
> the 3rd ("GPL") is the license type (some packagers require it, so
>    give some thoughts and pick one)
> the 4th ("Applications/Multimedia"), is basically where to put it in
>    the menus (called the "group" in some snobbish way). Some packagers
>    may not handle it, but some require it, so it's better to put one;
> the 5th is your address, so that you can be congratulated... or flamed !
> the 6th is an URL pointing to the project;
> the 7th is a long description of the package;
> the 8th (not present in the example) is the path to an icon file, that
>    some packager can use.

I guess the only thing that concerns me right now is that the list of positional
parameters in AP_INIT_AUTOPACK might become a little unwieldy in future as we
add further options, many of which are specific to particular packagers. Could
we do it with a bunch of separate macros, e.g.

AP_INIT_AUTOPACK
AP_INFO_LICENSE("GPL")
AP_INFO_AUTHOR("Christophe Tronche <address@hidden>")
...

Options that aren't specified could take sensible defaults (certain options
would presumably be mandatory) or if they really need to be specified for a
particular packager, that package target could fail with an error if the option
has not been defined.

Disclaimer: I'm an automake novice, so apologies in advance if the above is a
pile of dingo's kidneys...

Sy