KS2011: Afternoon topics [LWN.net]

KS2011: Afternoon topics

Posted Oct 31, 2011 9:57 UTC (Mon) by pkern (subscriber, #32883)
In reply to: KS2011: Afternoon topics by Cyberax
Parent article: KS2011: Afternoon topics

Wasn't waf the insane thing that didn't want to keep any backwards compatibility to recreate its configure stuff from old sources because it's ok to stick with an old version? (And hence it got removed from Debian, for instance?) So you need to ship it with your sources?

Also wasn't it the insane thing which actually shipped a compressed tarball with Python libs in sources that use it? (The "waf" binary alongside "configure".)

I know Debian had to patch a bunch of packages because waf was stupid and the result didn't build on hppa. You couldn't just regenerate the output because you needed the right version of waf to do that, i.e. the shipped one. So that needed patching. And you couldn't just apply the same patch neither because the build system is in a compressed blob.

Oh my, please spare us of this ridiculous thing.

(Log in to post comments)

KS2011: Afternoon topics

Posted Oct 31, 2011 13:43 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Nope, situation is more complex.

Waf can produce 'wafscript' which is basically a 'configure' file. That's not a preferred form for modifications, like you wouldn't want to modify 'configure' script directly (and not 'configure.ac'). Why waf won't build on hppa - I have no idea, it's a pure Python app.

Their stance regarding system-wide installation is curious, but not a problem.