proposal: Remove AM_MAINTAINER_MODE; call ./configure separately from autogen.sh

[David Hampton]

On Mon, 2005-11-07 at 14:28 +0100, Christian Stimming wrote:
> Ok, since my first try at autogen.sh simplification led to some 
> unexpected problems, I'll now propose the changes before I try to commit 
> these again.

Thanks you for working on this.  I like the simplified autogen.sh, and
the only problem I had (forgetting to pass --enable-maintainer-mode to
configure) is addressed by your next paragraph.

> Firstly, I'd propose to remove the AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro from 
> configure.in. This will basically turn on --enable-maintainer-mode 
> behaviour always and it will remove the option to turn it off. The 
> automake documentation advises against this macro anyway [1]. Currently 
> we almost emulate that behaviour in the README.svn anyway because if in 
> doubt, we advise people to run autogen.sh, which will give almost the 
> same effect as an enabled maintainer-mode. The only people who shouldn't 
> need to run this are the users who only got a tarball; however, in a 
> tarball the maintainer-mode rules won't be triggered because of the 
> correct timestamps during "make dist". So in effect we've relied on 
> --enable-maintainer-mode for a long time already, and it isn't helpful 
> to have it still disabled by default.

No complaints here

> Secondly, I propose that autogen.sh shouldn't call ./configure anymore 
> (my temporary committed autogen.sh already implemented this, but I 
> forgot to explain it up front here). The only reason we require this 
> right now is to pass --enable-maintainer-mode to configure; if that 
> cmdline argument is removed anyway, then there's no need to force the 
> configure calling by the autogen script anyway. In that case we can make 
> the distinction between the autogen steps (only for CVS...SVN 
> developers) and configure (for all users) more clear. Also, it isn't 
> autogen that uses cmdline options but it is only configure, so I think 
> the whole explanation of the options should be left to configure.

I agree with this completely.  Autogen should be an additional step
taken by only by developers using SVN sources.  Configure is a step
taken by everyone compiling the sources, be it from svn or a tarball.

David