Closed bobhairgrove closed 7 years ago
This looks like a timestamp issue caused by a combination of the fact that git does not preserve timestamps and the way that autoconf works. I'll add a fix-timestamps.sh script to address the issue.
This should really be fixed by running autoreconf -fi
... (assuming that this is a valid fix; I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to autotools).
This project (and others) seem to have been struggling with the same issue:
IMHO, requiring users to run an extra script after make
bails out is not an elegant way to solve this problem. It should "just work" by running configure && make && sudo make install
(if possible).
Hi Bob, I agree the solution is not elegant but there doesn't appear to be a better solution. A lot of projects run into this issue which is why it is specifically addressed in the automake documentation where the recommended approach is the timestamp script. Regarding autoreconf -fi
, I honestly don't see how this is related to the underlying issue or why it would help address the problem. It might be possible to incorporate the running of fix-timestamps.sh into the configure script which would further improve the current situation.
Here is another suggestion by enabling maintainer mode in configure.ac
:
https://autotools.io/automake/maintainer.html
Maybe this would be the best solution?
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is not a great solution in general but it may be a reasonable approach for this project.
OK, maybe we could leave it at that and run the script when necessary. Whatever works... then we can concentrate on the actual code!