Re: maintainer mode

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <address@hidden> writes:

Russ> [ rebuild rules ]
Russ> It just breaks everything.

That's too extreme.

Russ> I say this largely as a user who compiles hundreds of packages
Russ> that use autoconf and automake.  I have *never* been helped by
Russ> these Makefile rules, and I've had them completely destroy the
Russ> buildability package and eat themselves on frequent occasions.

My experience is that sometimes the rules are a pain and sometimes
they are very convenient.  It depends a lot on the environment in
which I'm working.

For projects where we use CVS and check in configure and other
generated files, I advocate AM_MAINTAINER_MODE.  That way you don't
get surprises.  Then I personally will configure with
--enable-maintainer-mode if I'm sure I have the right versions when I
work with that project.

For projects where we don't check in configure, then I tend not to use
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE.

For projects I get as a tarball, I don't care, since I probably won't
touch the auto* inputs anyway.

Tom