Bug 226751

Summary:	media-libs/libdc1394: patch (libdc1394-1.2.1-nox11.patch) changes both autotools source and result
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) <flameeyes>
Component:	New packages	Assignee:	Stefaan De Roeck (RETIRED) <stefaan>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	n-roeser
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---
Bug Depends on:
Bug Blocks:	226305

Description Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-06-14 16:39:15 UTC

The patch in summary is touching both Makefile.in and Makefile.am, probably to avoid autotools rebuild.

This treatment is usually reserved for a few selected system packages that cannot have their autotool scripts rebuilt.

This _could_ cause maintainermode-driven rebuild (see http://blog.flameeyes.eu/articles/2008/06/13/maintaner-mode ), which is something we should be avoiding as much as possible.

Please just patch Makefile.am and/or configure.in/.ac and rebuild autotools, unless you have very good reasons not to.

Comment 1 Stefaan De Roeck (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-06-14 21:28:22 UTC

I was just about to congratulate you on your QA issue detection abilities, but then I looked at the patch...
It seems to be patching Makefile.in only. Is this ok?  Or should I still convert this old package to patch Makefile.am instead and then run autotools?

Comment 2 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-06-14 22:07:16 UTC

Ah I think this slipped through. There are a few packages like this but I wanted to keep them separate for now, I misfiled this.

To sum up, packages only patching Makefile.in when Makefile.am is present are opening for different kind of problems, of which the major ones are:

- if maintainer mode is triggered, the patch is silently overridden;
- if another dev adds a patch that requires autotools rebuild, he/she might assume that if no autotools were called, all the patch touched sources rather than autotools (yes I know this would be a mistake of that dev, but let's be practical);
- if upstream changes the version of autotools, the patch will not apply at all, forcing you to add a different one on bump if it's not fixed yet.

There are a few use cases where this is going to bite you, but in general, it's not really a good idea at all. Patching both is somewhat opinable, there are cases where the hassle of rebuilding autotools is way too much, patching just the results can create problems.

Comment 3 Diego Elio Pettenò (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2011-03-21 14:29:26 UTC

Since it didn't even apply anymore (bug #308485), I've dropped the patch altogether.