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astrand / xclip

Command line interface to the X11 clipboard
GNU General Public License v2.0
1.04k stars 75 forks source link

./configure should work without needing autoconf first #89

Closed hackerb9 closed 3 years ago

hackerb9 commented 3 years ago

If I remember correctly, projects are supposed to distribute the configure script with the source code so that people don't need to install autoconf in order to build the program.

astrand commented 3 years ago

Correct. configure should be in release tarballs (but not in Git).

hackerb9 commented 3 years ago

Thanks. I hadn't known that it didn't belong in git, but I suppose it makes sense since it is a generated file.

Is this something we can bend the rules on to make it easier for other people to build directly from git? That seems to be more common than building from tar files these days. Also, configure is rarely regenerated so it wouldn't be much trouble to us to have it in git. Or would it?

I trust your judgment. If you are definitely opposed to bending the rules, let me know and I will close the issue. Thanks!

astrand commented 3 years ago

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15745534/should-i-include-configure-and-makefile-in-a-github-repository/41360302 seems to contain good information. I agree that building directly from Git is now common, but I think people should also be used to having to run bootstrap or autoreconf. So although I can accept bending the rules if you really want, my suggestion is still to avoid committing generated files such as configure.

hackerb9 commented 3 years ago

Including configure in a github release, not source, as suggested by the answer you linked to, makes sense to me.