comments files missing from tar ball

[robe]

Excerpted from ​https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/postgis-devel/2017-November/026731.html

From: postgis-devel [mailto:postgis-devel-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Tom van Tilburg
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2017 4:56 AM
To: PostGIS Development Discussion <postgis-devel@lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: [postgis-devel] extensions not building in 2.4.2?

Doing a fresh build on ubuntu 17.04 with:
./autogen.sh
./configure

I expect the extensions directory to be added to GNUMakefile, but it doesn't. Same procedure for  2.4.1 *does* build the extensions.
Looking into the configure.ac, it seems to boil down to: 
EXTENSIONS=""
if test \
        "x$XSLTPROC" != "x" -o \
        -e doc/postgis_comments.sql -a \
        -e doc/raster_comments.sql;

then
  if test "x$RASTER" = "xraster"; then
      AC_MSG_RESULT([enabling PostgreSQL extension support...])
      EXTENSIONS=extensions
      AC_SUBST([EXTENSIONS])
  fi
fi

This part is the same in 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 and the only thing that I can see that changes the outcome is the removal of doc/postgis_comments.sql and doc/raster_comments.sql 
from the 2.4.2 distribution. 

Now, since the SQL files were not supposed to be there in the first place (they have been put in .gitignore) it seems that all these years I have been building extensions illegally and free-riding on the distributed comments files (never ran into trouble with it). Is my assumption correct that the pre-2.4.2 configuration was wrong? And that I should fix my setup to build these comments files in order to get extensions back?

Best,
 Tom

[tilt]

I can confirm that after installing xsltproc on my linux distro (ubuntu 17.04) the build process includes the extensions again (and creates the *_comments.sql files again). It might not be a bug after all? Just confusing that this didn't give issues in pre-2.4.2 versions.

[strk]

As I wrote on the mailing list I think the only thing we can do here is changing make_dist.sh to make sure the distribution always looks like expected (ie: with or without the comment files - I'd think w/out).

[robe]

I want it with , we can change to without in 2.5.0 if you feel so strongly about it, but we can't change requirements in already released versions and in the past XSLT is not required if you are compiling from tar ball.

[robe]

I'm not sure why the comments were missing last time around or maybe the make_dist.sh script changed since then or something with setup of pramsey's machine.

Anyrate I have in place now for 2.4 and 2.5 that debbie will always be building, thus making the build more repeatable. #3985