[CF-Devel] autoconfig requirements

[crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com]

Todd Mitchell wrote:
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      One think I have brought up before and now again is that the
     
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      requirements to make the server are now automake1.7 and autoconfig 2.54
     
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      or higher.  These exceed the standard versions of these tool s in Debian
     
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      stable and likely many other distros.  Are these versions really
     
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      requirements?  I have managed to make the server by changing the
     
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      aclocal.m4 entry for autoconfig 2.54 to 2.52 and it compiles fine as far
     
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      as I can see (some automake warning but otherwise fine).  This would
     
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      represent a problem howver for folks not familiar with the server and
     
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      with distros that do not have this version of automake.  Should we
     
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      really force people to update standard OS tools to install a game?  My
     
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      point is if it isn't really a requirement then can we change it so that
     
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      people have less problems?  I am not saying that progress is not wanted
     
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      or that tools do not evolve, but arbitrary pseudo-requrements that cause
     
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      barriers or confusion for people are not good.  We cannot and do not
     
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      want to be tracking OS distros, but if a *required* tool version is not
     
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      in a major release such as Debian stable and is not *really* required I
     
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      can't see the value here.  I think it should be changed or someone
     
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      explain the necessity.  Personally I think it was likely slipped in by
     
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      accident.
     
     
  Looking at that code a little tonight, it appears that if you use the 
'autogen.sh' script in the top level directory, it then goes and runs aclocal 
and autoheader.  aclocal then embeds the versions of the various tools in its 
own files.

  The real solution is probably for users who have older versions to re-run the 
aclocal/autoheader/automake themselves.  The problem is that this re-generates 
all the makefiles.

  The better solution is probably to never use the autogen file.  Unless your 
actually changing the some of the custom macros, you should never need to run 
aclocal.  If all that is happening is that some makefile.am's are updated, all 
that should need to be done is run automake, which should hopefully not rev the 
required version information.

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      On a related note I think the server config should also check for X
     
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      libraries and if they are not there it should not attempt to make
     
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      crossedit.  Someone on this list should be educated enough in the build
     
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      configure scripting to be able to make that work, no?  Isn't it possible
     
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      to do something like:
     
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       if  not x11LIBS:
     
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      	SUBDIRS = A B C
     
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       else:
     
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      	SUBDIRS = A B C crossedit
     
     
  This should now be in place.  Not that hard in fact - just had to read the 
automake manual.



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