Checks that autotools generated files were re-generated correctly

[Christophe Lyon]

Hi!

On Mon, 6 Nov 2023 at 18:05, Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have inherited Martin Liška's buildbot script that checks that all
> sorts of autotools generated files, mainly configure scripts, were
> re-generated correctly when appropriate.  While the checks are hopefully
> useful, they report issues surprisingly often and reporting them feels
> especially unproductive.
>
> Could such checks be added to our server side push hooks so that commits
> introducing these breakages would get refused automatically.  While the
> check might be a bit expensive, it only needs to be run on files
> touching the generated files and/or the files these are generated from.
>
> Alternatively, Maxim, you seem to have an infrastructure that is capable
> of sending email.  Would you consider adding the check to your buildbot
> instance and report issues automatically?  The level of totally

After the discussions we had during Cauldron, I actually thought we
should add such a bot.

Initially I was thinking about adding this as a "precommit" check, to
make sure the autogenerated files were submitted correctly, but I
realized that the policy is actually not to send autogenerated files
as part of the patch (thus making pre-commit check impracticable in
such cases, unless we autogenerate those files after applying the
patch)

I understand you mean to run this as a post-commit bot, meaning we
would continue to "accept" broken commits, but now automatically send
a notification, asking for a prompt fix?

We can probably implement that, indeed. Is that the general agreement?

Thanks,

Christophe

> false-positives should be low (I thought zero but see
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2023-November/635358.html).
>
> Thanks for any ideas which can lead to a mostly automated process.
>
> Martin