Putting repository sources to work

Dealing with repository sources is much like dealing with tarball sources but with a significant difference. As a matter of personal taste and because I like to keep repository as generic as possible, no file that can be generated from another file already existing in the repository will be ever uploaded.

This means that files created by autoconf, automake, libtool and, in general all files created by autotools components must be regenerated in the user environment.

In particular, ./configure command cannot be run directly from repository downloaded sources as this command is not present in the repository because it will be generated by autoconf from configure.in and other scripts that do exist in the repository.

Because of this, you cannot deal directly with the repository sources unless your development environment contains the full autotool command set as to run the examples shown below.

This generic approach should permit sources not to be restricted to any particular environment release but (there is always an exception), because of syntax change in automake scripts, the environment should include automake 1.9 or higher release. Besides this, no other restriction is known.

The order in which autotool commands are executed is important as interdependencies exist. In the following example the full command sequence in the right order is shown for compiling sources directly downloaded from subversion repository. The example shows the download and compilation procedure followed for creating the jaula-1.1.0-1 release but it can be easily changed for any other repository revision.

$ svn checkout \
> https://jaula.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/jaula/tags/jaula-1.1.0-1 \
> jaula-1.1.0-1
$ cd jaula-1.1.0-1
$ aclocal
$ autoheader
$ libtoolize --copy --force
$ automake --add-missing --copy
$ autoconf # from this point configure is available and
$ ./configure # we can treat this sources as a tarball
$ make

Another use case that worth mentioning is how to create a source tarball from a generic subversion revision. For this, the dist make target can be used as shown in the following full example:

$ svn checkout \
> https://jaula.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/jaula/tags/jaula-1.1.0-1 \
> jaula-1.1.0-1
$ cd jaula-1.1.0-1
$ aclocal
$ autoheader
$ libtoolize --copy --force
$ automake --add-missing --copy
$ autoconf
$ ./configure
$ make dist

After running this command sequence a file named jaula-1.1.0.tar.bz2 will be available at project root level as well as an additional jaula-1.1.0.tar.gz file with standard gzip compression.

Although you may consider this way for dealing with repository a little bit restrictive, please consider the following:

  • If development is being held from different environments with different autotool component releases (which as a matter of fact is), excessive and unnecesary updates could be performed in the repository as configure and related scripts differ from one version to another although they essentially perform the same tasks.
  • There is little need for a general user to deal with repository sources as a source tarball will always exist for each file release. If you cannot run the command sequences showed or if the results are not what it was expected, please try to download any file release available for the project.
  • In case you are dealing with an environment where autotools are not available, you can always create a tarball source from any subversion revision (with the method explained before) in a complete system and then apply the resulting tarball in the target environment.

As with the other installation methods, if problems appear you can always submit a support request at the project tracker http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=193555.