Re: make distcheck in tinderbox [was Re: make check failures- gnome-vfs, e-d-s, at-spi]

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

On 7/18/05, Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 20:23 +0200, Ikke wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 13:28 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> > > > I think the advantages of adding make distcheck are bigger than the
> > > > disadvantages.
> > >
> > > OK, but what are they? :)
> > Making sure people doing anonymous cvs checkouts will at any time be
> > able to build the package they co, not running in major autotool
> > problems just before a release tarball should be made,...
> >
> 
> I think that ensuring that make distcheck works at release time is the
> maintainers responsibility. It is only important that it works at the
> time the release is made. 

While I generally agree, I think there is some value in being able to
build tarballs and hence easily build packages between releases- I
feel strongly we'd have a more stable project if we could easily
build/distribute daily snapshots like we used to. Not sure if that is
worth the admitted pain of nagging/etc., especially since ATM no one
is offering to build daily snaps.

> There is little value in being pestered about
> every time a checkin temporarily breaks make distcheck, e.g. because a
> new symbol was added without adding it to gtk.symbols.

FWIW, note that in this particular example, the test occurs in make
check, which I have gotten the impression most people feel should pass
constantly- but maybe I'm wrong here?

Luis