Do not keep generated autotools files under version control

[lpsinger]

This will fix build errors that we have observed with healpy. See healpy/healpy#991 (comment).

[lpsinger]

@bryanirby, would you please review this?

[bryanirby]

I need to think about this for a while. CFITSIO is a subtree of the HEASoft repository, for which it's preferable for us to have all of these files in place. So, I need time to consider options.

[lpsinger]

If you keep these in the source tree, then you need to update them whenever you make changes to configure.ac or Makefile.am. They are out of date now.

[bryanirby]

Duly noted, thanks.

[lpsinger]

I'm not sure why this only just now started being a problem for Healpy, but since this has broken our ability to do a release it is also indirectly a release-critical issue for Debian (see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1100222). Please fix this ASAP.

[bryanirby]

Ok, I've updated the config files on the develop branch and hope this helps.

[lpsinger]

Ok, I've updated the config files on the develop branch and hope this helps.

That worked (see healpy/healpy#998). Can you do a point release?

[bryanirby]

Yes, working on 4.6.1 now.

[bryanirby]

4.6.1 is published now.

[lpsinger]

I'm sorry, I spoke too soon. The healpy build is still failing with the same error as before:

CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/healpy/checkouts/996/cextern/cfitsio && /bin/bash '/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/healpy/checkouts/996/cextern/cfitsio/config/missing' aclocal-1.17
[554](https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/#265254068--554)	      /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/healpy/checkouts/996/cextern/cfitsio/config/missing: line 85: aclocal-1.17: command not found
[555](https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/#265254068--555)	      WARNING: 'aclocal-1.17' is missing on your system.
[556](https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/#265254068--556)	               You should only need it if you modified 'acinclude.m4' or
[557](https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/#265254068--557)	               'configure.ac' or m4 files included by 'configure.ac'.
[558](https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/#265254068--558)	      make: *** [Makefile:706: /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/healpy/checkouts/996/cextern/cfitsio/aclocal.m4] Error 127

See https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/healpy/builds/27635307/.

[bryanirby]

Ok, unfortunately I don't really know what to do here. When I re-run all of the autotools, nothing changes, so I have nothing new to commit.

[bryanirby]

Does it help if you "touch aclocal.m4 configure Makefile.am Makefile.in" before the build?

[lpsinger]

Does it help if you "touch aclocal.m4 configure Makefile.am Makefile.in" before the build?

That does prevent it from regenerating and rerunning configure when you run make, but I have no simple way to add a touch command to our CI/CD pipeline.

What you could do is add the macro AM_MAINTAINER_MODE (no arguments) to your configure.ac file, right below AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. This will disable automatically regenerating the build system unless the user invokes ./configure with the flag --enable-maintainer-mode.

Would you please try that? This is becoming urgent because I am getting nastygrams from fellow Debian maintainers.

[bryanirby]

Ok, I just pushed changes to the develop branch to use AM_MAINTAINER_MODE. It works okay for me, let me know if it fixes things for you.

[lpsinger]

Ok, I just pushed changes to the develop branch to use AM_MAINTAINER_MODE. It works okay for me, let me know if it fixes things for you.

That works. Please release that.

[bryanirby]

Ok, it's released. Before future releases we'll plan to check in with you first to try to avoid any urgent scenarios.

[wrp]

I'm not really sure where (if anywhere) this conversation is taking place, but this is a change that needs to happen. Distributing autoconf generated metafiles in git is not a good idea. That is what distribution tarballs are for. AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is not a good solution, and was abandoned decades ago. (Jim Meyering, the author of the macro, stopped using it "several years ago" as of 2006!!). If there are structural issues preventing these files from being removed from git, those are deeper issues that need to be resolved.

[bryanirby]

Hi @wrp - Thanks for the note. There are structural issues underlying our historical preference for keeping the autotools-generated files in the distribution, and we weren't aware of any reasons other than aesthetic ones for removing them. However, we will revisit this issue as soon as possible. Thanks again.