[PATCH] configure: Stop using AM_MAINTAINER_MODE

[Gaetan Nadon]

On 12-09-29 04:37 PM, Dan Nicholson wrote:
>
> > Some distros may prefer maintainer mode. A way to appease everyone is:
> >
> > AM_MAINTAINER_MODE([enable])
>
> Oh, yeah. That would be the best.
>
The historical background is that mode was added as a CVS tarball
timestamp loss workaround before the git days. Whoever wishes to keep
this workaround should demonstrate that they extract tarballs from CVS
and want to prevent the build to re-create the configuration because the
timestamp was lost and files appear to be out-of-date.

The most desirable option is to remove both the --enable-maintainer-mode
parameter in autohen.sh (to avoid introducing a new warning) and the
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE statement in configure.ac. This will relieve  people
who edit configure.ac from a tarball. As it is today, the configuration
is not re-creared. That is  why people insisted on keeping autogen.sh in
tarballs, which was a workaround to the CVS workaround.

Peter is right, it should be done in all the repos.

The patch is incomplete. It will introduce a new warning as the option
--enable-maintainer-mode is not recognized because of the missing
AM_MAINTAINER_MODE statement. If the statement is amended with the
"enable" parameter, then the CVS workaround is disabled. This will not
stop, however, other people from proposing the restoration of the
workaround, asking questions, and reopening the discussion many times
over the next few decades. Might as well take in out of the files and
out of sight.

The burden of the proof lies on "some distros".