On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 04:57:29PM -0500, Rich Persaud wrote: > > On Jan 14, 2020, at 21:42, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote: > > Since we have those generated files committed to the repo (why?!), > > update them after changing configure.ac. > > Is there any reason not to remove the generated configure files? A developer using generated files on system B would be incorporating configuration assumptions from system A where the configure script was generated. If we are going to ship configure scripts, do we need to document a "system A" reference distro/environment where all configure scripts from Xen will be generated? > > > Other notes: > > 1. Debian autoreconf works in the Xen root directory, but the default OpenEmbedded autoreconf uses Gnu libtoolize and fails because some Xen build subdirectories don't have configure.ac/.in. > > 2. If OpenEmbedded autoreconf is run only in the tools directory (where it works and generates a new tools configure), then root configure (generated from older configure.ac) will silently ignore the newer tools configure and write config.h _without_ tools-specific config, such as the vchan QMP proxy. > > 3. If autoreconf runs successfully in the root directory, then tools-specific configure is correctly generated and everything works as expected. > > This silent failure could be avoided by deleting the generated configure scripts. There may be other failure modes for using System A generated scripts on downstream build system B. Yes, I think general good practices are: 1. don't keep generated autotools files in version control system 2. generate them into release tarballs -- Best Regards, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki Invisible Things Lab A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?