leveraging "make dist", info for developers

Hi,

so we (actually uwog, our merited release manager) have been crafting
release tarballs by hand. I've spent some time so we will be able to
automatically create working tarballs using "make dist".

Currently for cvs module "abi" "make dist" creates a tarball named
abiword-$version.tar.gz, similar for "abidistfiles", which is released
as "abiword-extras-$version.tar.gz". The "abiword-plugins" and
"abiword-docs" cvs modules are work in progress.

Please, from now on, when adding new header files in the "abi" module,
also add them to the headers_DATA variable in the corresponding
GNUmakefile.am. Auxiliary files must be added to EXTRA_DIST.

As said, abiword-plugins is work in progress, but if you happen to
touch a plugin, please add all its headers to the corresponding
_SOURCES variable in GNUmakefile.am. That way i hope to get stuff done
until the 2.5.0 release. Alternatively, if anyone could come up with a
script, that would certainly go a long way. Or, if you are new to
hacking on abiword and have been waiting for a chance to get your
first patch in, this is the time.

Finally, please don't read this as an presumption you folks don't know
about that basic automake stuff, it's just a little change in how
we're using it to gain more in the future.

Best,
Rob
Received on Wed Nov 29 14:20:29 2006