🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Phil" == phil hunt <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk> writes:

Phil> How do people make tarballs?

Phil> The way i do this is that first I create a directory
Phil> parrot-0.2.5/ which contains evereything I want to include from
Phil> the parrot/ directory to go into the tarball. This is
Phil> potentially error-prone, especially as it is a routine (&
Phil> therefore boring) administrative task. Then I execute the tar
Phil> command above.

Phil> Is there an easier way?

Yes.  Automake automates this into `make dist'.

You can also be sure that your tarball will work by running `make distcheck'.
This is like `make dist' but it then unpacks the new package,
configures it in a fresh tree, builds it, runs `make install' and then
`make check'.  `distcheck' only succeeds if the whole process
succeeds.  This isn't foolproof, but it does eliminate a number of
common bugs (e.g., leaving a file out).

Tom