Dear Julian,

especially with packages maintained in VCS, it would be very helpful if
dh_autoreconf and dh_autoreconf_clean would support a list of additional
files dh_autoreconf backs up and dh_autoreconf_clean restores in
addition to the common files.

It would be even better if this list of files would be read from a
file, lets say debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve, and that dh_autoreconf and
dh_autoreconf_clean look for that file by default (bug ignore if it's
not present).

Such a feature would save me the following overrides in multiple
packages:

override_dh_autoreconf:
	tar cfT debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve.tar debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve
	dh_autoreconf

override_dh_autoreconf_clean:
	dh_autoreconf_clean
	if [ -f debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve.tar ]; then \
	  tar xf debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve.tar; \
	  rm debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve.tar; \
	fi

For example for zile, debian/dh_autoreconf_preserve would contain these
files:

INSTALL
Makefile.in
aclocal.m4
build-aux/compile
build-aux/config.guess
build-aux/config.sub
build-aux/depcomp
build-aux/missing
config.h.in
configure
doc/zile.1.in
lib/Makefile.in
src/tbl_funcs.h
src/tbl_vars.h

Hi Axel,

[sorry it took a bit long to reply]

This surely sounds reasonable, but currently dh-autoreconf deletes
files, and does not restore them. I am experimenting with switching
to a copy-on-write approach, where I hardlink all files to a backup
directory and then run autoreconf inside cow-shell. In cleanup, I'd
just restore the state of the backup directory. This should fix your
issue.

I plan to ship this in jessie + 1. I think it's too late for such a
change now - dh-autoreconf is used by 10% of the archive

Hi Julian,

Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Fine for me. Glad, you're considering it at all. No hurry needed.

Creating a tar archive of stuff I need to delete for building and
later restoring it from that tar archive again works fine for me so
far. It just always needs at least two dh overrides...

Yay!

		Regards, Axel

Hi again,

I just had a second thought:

Julian Andres Klode wrote:

So maybe dh-autoreconf isn't the right place for that anyways.

Maybe it needs a new package called e.g. dh-backup-and-restore which
provides dh_drop_files (backups and deletes files), dh_backup_files
(just backs up files) and dh_restore_files (restores a backed up
files).

Those programs could read debian/drop_files and debian/backup_files as
file lists and copy them away, maybe into debian/backed_up_files/.

Copy and write also would be nice, but somehow sounds like being less
KISS than I'd prefer.

		Regards, Axel