Re: Autoconf with Debian patches

[Denis Ovsienko via tcpdump-workers <tcpdump-workers () lists tcpdump org>]

> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
> From: Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info>
>
> Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2023 13:24:56 +0000
>
> On Sat, 7 Jan 2023 18:47:37 -0800
> Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 7, 2023, at 8:51 AM, Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 17:13:20 -0800
> > > Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net> wrote:
> > >   
> > > > On Jan 6, 2023, at 3:31 PM, Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >   
> > > > > It is the latter, and a custom Autoconf seems an unreasonable
> > > > > requirement for contributing.    
> > > >
> > > > Reasonable, or unreasonable?  
> > >
> > > Unreasonable, if it is more complicated than installing an Autoconf
> > > package using the package manager of the OS.  
> >
> > Which it is likely to be.
>
> Okay, let's not go out of the packaged Autoconf space then.
>
> > > > (By the way, have other Linux distributions applied the same
> > > > changes that Debian and its derivatives have?  If not, then users
> > > > of those distributions would be in the same situation as macOS and
> > > > FreeBSD users.)  
> > >
> > > I do not remember to what extent these patches have propagated
> > > beyond Debian and Ubuntu.  Maybe somebody else has other
> > > distributions ready to check?  
> >
> > Fedora 36 and later appear to ship autoconf 2.71; the Debian sid
> > package for autoconf 2.71 applies no patches to it, as, I presume,
> > all of the Debian packages are applied (the off_t patch is already
> > incorporated in 2.71).  Debian's currently shipping 2.69, which
> > requires their pile of patches.
>
> Thank you for this information.  Let me add that Ubuntu 20.04 defaults
> to 2.69, but Ubuntu 22.04, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and OmniOS all
> currently default to Autoconf 2.71.  Would it make the most sense to
> make 2.71 the nominal version (especially for releases), but to maintain
> backward compatibility with 2.69 for quite a while longer?
>
> > Fedora shipped autoconf 2.69, without a patch like the Debian off_t
> > patch but with a patch like the Debian "add runstatedir" patch.  I
> > don't know what RHEL has.
> >
> > Looking at the Arch Linux repository, there doesn't appear to be a
> > version of the off_t patch from when they shipped 2.69; they're
> > currently shipping 2.71.  The same applies to Gentoo.
> >
> > But at least some of them have 2.71 patches, so there's no guarantee
> > that all the releases that have 2.71 will generate exactly the same
> > script.
>
> Identical behaviour everywhere would be unrealistic.  Minimizing the
> average noise level in pull requests should be realistic, although not
> critical, but nice to have.
>
> -- 
>     Denis Ovsienko
>
> --- End Message ---
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