Re: Should Autotools integrate with VCS ignore files?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022, Горбешко Богдан wrote:
> So, should Autotools be improved to detect a known VCS being used and add 
> ignore lines for it automatically? Many modern project generators and build 
> systems, including Meson and create-react-app, do that to some extent, but I 
> doubt if this is actually in the scope of Autotools and follows its ideas.

The decision of which files to commit to the VCS varies 
project-by-project.  Some projects commit all generated files, some 
projects commit certain types of generated files (e.g. omitting ones 
due to Autotools), and others avoid committing any generated content.

If Automake were to provide such a facility, it should be under 
control of the user and/or the project and not completely automatic. 
For example, there could be a Make target which produces the ignore 
file.

The tools would need to work given manually generated ignore content.

Generated documentation is a special class of file which needs to be 
considered since not all recipients of the repository will be able to 
deal with it.  Generated documentation may depend on particular 
software which needs to be at a particular version or configured a 
particular way.

Automake produces a Makefile.  I don't think Automake is specifically 
aware of the purpose of many of the rules which create/update files in 
the source tree (assuming building outside of the source tree) and 
sometimes it is not aware at all due to simply passing through 
user-provided Make fragments.

Lastly, sometimes the files from one VCS are stored within another 
(e.g. git in Mercurial) and the tool would need to know the file and 
the desired syntax (e.g. glob vs regex).

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
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