Re: Constantly changing libtool

[Warren Young]

On Apr 15, 2021, at 11:23 AM, Paul Smith <psmith@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 08:33 -0500, Laurence Marks wrote:
>> there should be a way to autoupdate autoXYZ files for each system

autoreconf?   https://linux.die.net/man/1/autoreconf

>> without user intervention.

Post-checkout hooks?   https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks

> The problem comes (IMO) from checking in generated files.

Ding-ding-ding!  Correct answer.

You (the OP) should be shipping a bootstrap/autogen.sh type script with your 
software to bring the version controlled checkout’s state up to the level you’d 
use for a distribution tarball, running the tools that autoreconf would do, in 
the proper order.

Here’s the relevant section of one of mine:

   https://tangentsoft.com/mysqlpp/file?name=bootstrap&ln=124-129

As that script shows, there’s a lot more you may want to put in such a script.  
What all you write here depends on build system details of the software.

For instance, my current version control system doesn’t like to version-control 
symlinks all that much, so in packages that need symlinks to avoid committing 
redundant files, I have the bootstrap script regenerate them.