bug#10878: "make dist" with read-only srcdir generates read-only tarball

[Stefano Lattarini]

severity 10878 wishlist
tags 10878 wontfix
close 10878
thanks


On 02/24/2012 08:09 AM, Nick Bowler wrote:
>
> Automake should at least add user write permissions to all files in
> distdir prior to running dist-hook (and hence prior to generating the
> distribution tarball).
>
I disagree; in case the user wants to change the permission of the distributed
files from the ones that they have in the builddir/srcdir, he can do so in the
dist-hook already, with full control (I've just added a tiny test to verify
this behaviour, see attached patch).  So we don't need to change the automake
behaviour in this respect (but a documentation improvement might be nice, in
case someone feels like writing it).

On 02/24/2012 05:12 PM, Eric Blake replied:
>
> Automake must not add write permissions to files that were intended to
> be shipped as read-only.  For example, coreutils intentionally converts
> generated-but-distributed files to read-only, so that users are more
> likely to notice that they should edit the source that generates the
> file, and not the generated file itself.
> 
> So how do you propose to tell automake which files are supposed to be
> read-only, vs. those that should be writable even if the tarball was
> re-created from a read-only srcdir?
>
With a dist-hook ;-)

Regards,
   Stefano

0001-coverage-test-that-dist-hook-can-modify-file-permiss.patch
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