[Xapian-devel] Re: [Xapian-commits] 7891: trunk/xapian-core/

[Richard Boulton]

Olly Betts wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 09:07:04AM +0000, richard wrote:
>> * HACKING: Note on running preautoreconf and autoreconf to keep SVN
>>   builds working.
> 
> What's the scenario in which you have to run them by hand?  I'd rather
> fix this to just work automatically than document deficiencies in the
> build system.

It was a problem with generate-exceptions.in not being run to generate 
"error.h".  On reflection, it's possible the build this occurred in 
hadn't been configured with "--enable-maintainer-mode", which would 
explain why the build system didn't get updated automatically.

> I fixed a problem a few weeks ago with removed files which were listed
> in dependencies preventing "make" from working, so if you were having
> such problems with 0.9.10, this is probably already fixed in trunk.  I
> didn't backport this change, since it's only relevant when building from
> SVN.

Sure.  However, I think it's fair to say that there have often been 
problems with getting this to work automatically after relatively major 
changes to the build system have been made (eg, when new scripts have 
been introduced to generate files), and while we should continue to try 
and fix such problems, I thought it might be helpful to document a way 
out of the situation when it does occur.  Perhaps the wording should 
indicate that this isn't meant to happen better.  How about:

"If you are tracking development in SVN, there will sometimes be changes
to the build system sources which require regeneration of the generated
makefiles and associated machinery. We aim to make the build system
automatically regenerate the necessary files, but in the event that a
build fails after an update, it may be worth re-running the bootstrap
script to regenerate the build system from scratch, before looking for
the cause of the error elsewhere."

-- 
Richard