Re: Autoconf and CVS

[Keith Marshall]

On Saturday 24 December 2005 10:15 am, Daniel Pekelharing wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-12-24 at 09:24 +0100, Baurzhan Ismagulov wrote:
> > Hello Daniel,
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 09:40:52AM +0200, Daniel Pekelharing wrote:
> > > I am in the process of importing my project into CVS,
> > > but I am a little confused as to Autoconf, should I import all
> > > generated Makefile's, Makefile.in's, configure etc. ?
> > > I personally think I should leave them out of CVS, and just include
> > > configure.ac and Makefile.am's.
> >
> > If you plan to support many users from various places, you'll have to
> > answer many questions since they may have other versions of the tools,
> > which may not be able to process your configure.ac and Makefile.am. If
> > you are going to use it in a small closed group where you have control
> > over the tool versions installed, this approach may work. OTOH,
> > committing a couple of files every now and then is not such a big
> > problem: you have to commit configure.ac and Makefile.am anyway, so the
> > updated files will be committed at the same time. I personally keep the
> > generated files in CVS, don't have any problems, and my users are happy
> > since they don't need to install autotools.
> >
> > With kind regards,
> > Baurzhan.
>
> I did think about that..
>
> But as I plan on periodically making releases, which will include all
> auto generated files, that should be OK for end users.. (I think ;-))

If you are providing public CVS access, then you really do need to include 
the generated `configure' and `Makefile.in' files in the repository.  If your 
CVS access is restricted to just a small localised pool of developers, then 
this may be less important.

> Interesting thought: Wouldn't it get annoying if many devs are working
> on one CVS controlled project, and they have different version
> autotools, surely each time they commit their changes they're possibly
> going to have conflicts? Which would make the files unusable? (until
> resolved).

Entrust the commits for these generated files to only a few lead developers;
then only they need to keep their autotool installations synchronised, and up 
to date.  If other developers need to make configure.ac or Makefile.am 
changes, let them submit patches to these lead developers, for committal.

I believe this is the way the majority of GNU projects are managed.

> Just my thought, I'm a newbie to Autotools and CVS, so maybe it's not
> such a problem :-)

We were all newbies at one time.  What works well for GNU can't be a bad 
example to follow.

Regards,
Keith.