Re: tarball should include m4-files needed for autoconf

On 2/26/07, Steven M. Schultz <[email protected]> wrote:
>         The two ways around that which I have used are:  1) check the "add
>         matching devel packages" when installing the system (I know SuSE offers
>         this option) or 2) 'cvs checkout' and build it (which is what I do for
>         OSX - painless build).

In Gentoo land, the user is the developer.  Everyone compiles their
own packages.  The problem is that Gentoo wants to patch mjpegtools,
and then let the user compile it, with or without SDL, quicktime, etc.
 With Gentoo, you specify the options for each package.  For example,
mjpegtools looks like:

[ebuild   R   ] media-video/mjpegtools-1.8.0-r1  USE="X dv gtk png%*
quicktime sdl (-3dnow) -dga (-mmx) (-sse) -v4l -yv12" 0 kB

I can enabe/disable X, dv, gtk, png, quicktime, sdl, dga, v4l, and
yv12 support.  I can't change 3dnow, mmx, or sse support because I
have an AMD64; all those are part of the spec.

The question is how do I, as a general user who does not want SDL,
patch mjpegtools?  I can't... the assumption that anyone
building/patching a system is a developer who has unnecessary packages
installed is somewhat burdensome, and against the whole philosophy of
Gentoo.  Relying on gcc, libtool, autoconf/automake is part of
building ANY package, but relying on SDL, dv, gtk, etc is not.

>         If folks want to build stripped down or whatever packages then it's
>         up to them to figure out out to do it.  Other developers just install
>         the extra packages on their system(s).

With Gentoo, every user is a developer.  And many users like to build
stripped down versions of packages, which is why we use Gentoo in the
first place (since it gives us control over the build process.)


I agree that putting the m4 files in CVS is retarded, but I think
adding them to the built tarball is easy and wouldn't negatively
affect the CVS repository or the build and release process of
mjpegtools.
-- 
        Scott

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