Patching configure - Or Not

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 8, 2008, at 07:25, N_Ox wrote:

> Le 8 févr. 08 à 12:13, Anders F Björklund a écrit :
>
>> Michael Franz wrote:
>>
>>> I need to change the way configure works for a port.  Is it  
>>> better to patch configure or change the underlying files and  
>>> regenerate configure?  In this case I have a change to  
>>> acinclude.m4.  To get everything updated I need to run aclocal,  
>>> automake and autoconf.
>>>
>>> Since I cannot figure out how to get aclocal, automake and  
>>> autoconf to run in the pre-configure step I have to patch  
>>> configure.  Is this a good idea?
>>
>> If you want to patch something simple, then the quick-and-dirty  
>> approach is to patch *both*.
>> This makes it easy to use, but also easier to separate when  
>> sending the patch upstream...
>
> The real quick-and-dirty method is to use reinplace :p

I do not like using reinplace for things which should really be  
patches. If a reinplace fails and does nothing, we get no warning. If  
a patch fails, we get a warning.

Maybe reinplace should be updated so that it issues a warning if  
nothing was reinplaced?