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

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2022-02-16 23:12, Jason Liu wrote:
> 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>

Thank you for the link, Jason.

The contents of this project's `autogen.sh`[1] are not simply a call to 
`autoreconf -i`. There are 346 lines, 3 functions, and a sequence of 
calls to autotools components like aclocal, autoheader, libtoolize, 
autoconf, and automake. Interestingly, it calls aclocal twice: once
before autoheader and libtoolize, and again after.

This `autogen.sh` was first checked in back in 2002, with quite a 
similar structure to what it has today. I am guessing that it predates
`autoreconf`, and that the project has never decided to do the work of
switching over to `autoreconf`.

I think I don't want to take on that switchover as part of improving
the MacPorts port of this codebase.

Thank you for the tips, everyone. I am learning a lot, even if I'm
not checking in code as a result.

[1] <https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv/blob/master/autogen.sh>

Best regards,
      --Jim DeLaHunt