Re: [wdiff-bugs] Build problems fixed, please test for 0.5.4 release

[Santiago Vila]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007, Denver Gingerich wrote:

> > Frankly, I think the current build system (using "touch" and similar things)
> > is too much hacky for a GNU official release. Sometimes I use that trick
> > on Debian packages because I need to make the Makefiles to believe
> > that I have not modified something in the Debian .diff.gz, but that
> > have been always a temporary hack until the next upstream "clean"
> > version which does not need any hacks.
> 
> Personally, I'm fine with keeping this hack in because it's for
> somewhat of an intermediate release.  Once we remake the build system
> for the package, these sorts of things should become a non-issue, but
> I don't want to do that in this release because its intent is to be an
> integration of 0.5g.  Please comment on whether you think this is too
> hacky, especially if you have lots of experience with GNU packages.

I have some experience packaging GNU packages for Debian, and I have
never seen a hack like that in an official GNU package.

Anyway, isn't this what automake's "maintainer mode" is for? If the
makefiles do what they are supposed to do, generated files will always
have a later timestamp than the files on which they depend, so by
artificially using "touch", things will work worse, not better.