Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] my intro

[Yavor Doganov]

Noah Slater wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 07:27:47PM +0100, Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> > We recommend using 'COPYING' [...]
> 
> Is it okay if COPYING is added by GNU Automake at packaging time but
> is absent from the actual source. I do not like keeping generated
> files in my repository and this is no exception.

The tarball should contain generated files.  Note also that COPYING is
not exactly a generated file, and as of Automake 1.10.2 a warning is
issued if it is missing:

Makefile.am: installing `./COPYING' using GNU General Public License v3 file
Makefile.am:     Consider adding the COPYING file to the version control system
Makefile.am:     for your code, to avoid questions about which license your 
project uses.

It is wrong to trust Automake for always doing the right thing -- for
example when GPLv4 is released, Automake will default to it in its
first subsequent relese, but your project may not be able to upgrade
to v4 for other reasons (or because you don't want to).