Patch ./configure, or use autogen.sh instead?

[Jason Liu]

autogen.sh is quite often just a wrapper around autoreconf -i. If you run
'autoreconf --install' (which is what 'use_autoreconf yes' runs), in
many/most cases it's equivalent to running autogen.sh.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50044091/what-is-the-job-of-autogen-sh-when-building-a-c-package-on-linux

-- 
Jason Liu


On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 11:15 PM Jim DeLaHunt <list+macports-dev at jdlh.com>
wrote:

> On 2022-02-15 01:08, Joshua Root wrote:
> >
> > On 2022-2-15 19:28 , Jim DeLaHunt wrote:
> >> I am working on a port[1], where I want to patch a couple of autoconf
> >> macros[2] and configure.ac ....
> >> The codebase supplies a script, ./autogen.sh . It runs autoconf,
> >> libtool, etc. etc. and regenerates the ./configure script,
> >> incorporating the fixes from the patched macros....
> >>
> >> I see two ways to solve this:
> >> a) tell the Portfile to use ./autogen.sh as the configure command. Let
> >> every user rebuild the ./configure script
> >> b) patch the ./configure script with the same fixes as the autoconf
> >> macros....
> >
> > ...We have a shortcut for option a) by the way: 'use_autoreconf yes'.
> That
> > adds the needed deps for you and usually works fine on its own (plus
> > 'autoreconf.args -fi' if you want to regenerate absolutely everything
> > from scratch), but if special options are needed, you can also set
> > 'autoreconf.cmd ./autogen.sh'....
>
> Thank you for the reply, Joshua.
>
> You mention autoreconf. I just learned something new! I did not know
> about autoreconf[1], a tool included in autoconf.
>
> It looks like upstream does not use autoreconf. They have a shell script
> `autogen.sh`. For all I know it is something they created themselves.
> Like autoreconf, it runs autoconf, automake, libtoolize, etc. etc. I
> have no assurance that I can replace it with autoreconf.
>
> Thus I think I will try running ./autogen.sh in place of ./configure,
> and see how far that gets me. It is good to know that patching
> ./configure is not out of the question.
>
> Best regards,
>      --Jim DeLaHunt
>
> [1]
> <
> https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.71/html_node/autoreconf-Invocation.html
> >
>
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