cleaning up xfce-dev-tools

[Natanael Copa]

On Tue, 08 May 2012 13:20:33 +0000
Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org> wrote:
 
> On Tue, 8 May 2012 15:02:09 +0200, Natanael Copa
> <ncopa at alpinelinux.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I feel an urgent need to clean up xfce-dev-tools a bit and get
> > completely rid of the .{ac,in}.in. Only use .ac (or .in).
> > 
> > I could probably help with cleaning things up but I need to know:
> > How do you guys want it to work?
> 
> First and foremost I'd like to hear *why* you feel an "urgent need"
> to do this and what is bothering you about the .ac.in, .in.in files.

1) Because I have wanted to contribute to xfce long time. But every time
i get demotivated but the .in.in. Its just so ugly and does not inspire
to write clean and efficient code. (autotools is ugly enough)

2) Packagers once in a while need to patch things. When patching the
general rules are:
* If upstream has fixed the issue, use that patch rather than reinvent.
* Don't patch generated code. Fix the stuff that generates code.
* Get you patch accepted upstream
  - send them a patch they simply can apply at first sight without any
    rework (otherwise the reported bug tend to remain unresolved for
    much longer time)

None of those are possible when configure.in.in is involved.

3) I like clean and efficient code.

> With no good reasons provided I think your "how do you want it
> to work?" question is easily answered with: exactly the way it works
> at the moment. ;)

Ok. That makes it easy.

Please at least ship the .in.in files with the tarballs.

-nc