Inflation of explicit build requirements

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun  5, 2004, Michael Schwendt <fedora at wir-sind-cool.org> wrote:

>> automake* ? autoconf* ?

> Without the '*' I would agree.

>> + libtool of course!

> Maybe. (It requires libtool-libs and hence provides GNU ltdl.)

You're not supposed to require any of these at build time.  They're
development-time programs.  IMHO, if you need to patch whatever
upstream shipped, run the tools to update generated files, create a
patch file, and arrange for that patch file to be applied just like
any other patch file.  Then, if someone upgrades their autoconf*,
automake* or libtool* packages, the package won't suddenly stop
building.

Yeah, I agree it's a pain, but it's the right way to do it.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}