Re: GIT source build failure: wcwidth.c::_wcwidth misses __locale_cjk_lang()

[Eric Blake <eblake at redhat dot com>]

On 08/22/2016 04:23 PM, Hans-Bernhard Bröker wrote:

>>> That did not work for me. config/override.m4 insisted rather strictly
>>> that
>>> only 2.64 is allowed to be used.  I shredded lines 30ff. from that
>>> file to
>>> get past that one.
>>
>> Same here.  Neither Jeff nor I are autotools experts, so we would be
>> mightly happy if we could get patches to pull the repo to a newer
>> autotools state.
>>
> 
> Well, FWIW, the attached lift-autconf-version-restriction.diff bluntly
> removes that restriction.  I won't guarante the absence of any adverse
> effect, thoughe ;-)
> 

The strongest argument for insisting on an EXACT version is that you
want the generated code checked into git, and for that code to not
undergo a lot of churn if anyone regenerates it under a different
autotool version.  Once you have generated files checked in, then
developers that don't have the right autotools can get by with the
checked in output from the tools.

As long as we rely on --cygnus, we rely on an exact version being
checked in.  But if our goal is to get rid of --cygnus, it makes more
sense to DROP the generated files from git, and to merely require that
developers have new-enough tools installed locally, and bootstrap things
themselves on a git checkout with 'autoreconf -v'.  That is, if we don't
care what version of autotools are used, then we DON'T want the
generated code checked in, as everyone using a different autotools
version will then be stuck with needless local differences.

So I would favor a move towards dropping the generated files altogether
from git (they would still be present in tarballs created by 'make
dist', of course), and just requiring developers to instead have an
up-to-date autotools installation, rather than relying on generated files.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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