Create an experimental autotools spkg

[jdemeyer]

spkg: ​http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/jdemeyer/spkg/autotools-20120810.spkg

autotools

Description

This package contains a recent version of GNU m4 and help2man. It contains the git repository of autoconf, automake and libtool.

For the latter 3 packages (commonly referred to as "autotools"), many different versions are installed, by checking out the versions from the git repo and building/installing them separately. Since the complete git repository is shipped in the spkg, this does not require internet access.

For m4 and help2man, just one version is installed. This is because they are prerequisites for autotools. Even though m4 is already a prerequisite of Sage, autoconf requires an up-to-date version of GNU m4.

The package makes wrapper scripts in $SAGE_LOCAL/bin for the various autotools, which call the "correct" version. This means that, if a file "configure" already exists in the current directory, the same autoconf version is run which created the original file. Otherwise, the latest version is run. The goal of all this is to make it easier to patch configure.ac or Makefile.am files inside a spkg. By using the same version of autotools as originally used, the patch files should be relatively small.

License

GNU General Public License version 3 or later.

SPKG Maintainers

• Jeroen Demeyer

Upstream Contact

• ​http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
• ​http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/
• ​http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
• ​http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
• ​http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/

Dependencies

• GNU coreutils
• Perl
• Git

Special Update/Build Instructions

This package has only been tested on GNU/Linux systems and will likely fail to build on other systems. Since this package is only intended for package developers, that should not be a big problem.

The file spkg-src can be used to automatically create or update the git repositories.

Changelog

autotools-20120810 (Jeroen Demeyer, 10 August 2012)

• Initial release, contains m4-1.4.16, help2man-1.40.11 and git sources for autoconf, automake and libtool.

[fbissey]

Why did you go for a git snapshot for auto{conf,make} and libtool? I understand that automake is in transition (some commands are removed and so on). I understand that you want something that will last a bit but you could still have gone for real releases.

[fbissey]

I understand now. Rather than shipping the usual spkg way you pull from git for every versions you want to install. It is fairly involved but it is an experimental spkg. I am not sure keeping all the versions in question is necessary (but I am familiar with the goal).

I cannot see any obvious problems with this definitely non-obvious spkg. It should be made clear that this spkg requires internet access unlike standard spkg.

[jdemeyer]

Replying to fbissey:

It should be made clear that this spkg requires internet access unlike standard spkg.

It doesn't require internet access, the full git tree is shipped with the spkg.

[jdemeyer]

I updated the description (both in SPKG.txt and in the ticket). Is it more clear now what the package does?

[fbissey]

So all those hidden files are all that is needed to recreate a particular tag? That's neat that you can pull it like that. Yes it is more clear. Let's get this done now.

[schilly]

i just put the spkg into the experimental directory on the server+mirrors.