[asterisk-dev] ./bootstrap: Why not done by core members?

[Alexander Traud]

When a contributor changes the file
   configure.ac, or
   menuselect/configure.ac, or
   third-party/pjproject/configure.m4, or
   third-party/jansson/configure.m4,
the Asterisk Team forced the contributor to execute "./bootstrap.sh" via code review.

This created hotspots in the file "./configure" because different variants of the creation scripts exist on various platforms. For years, this was just [1] and [2].

Since about two years, PKG_CHECK_MODULES has a different white space and a different log message. The whole drama can be seen in commit <https://github.com/asterisk/asterisk/commit/b7fbb9c41f3c1a071c594c68ff0dcc763291d451> normally a change of just two lines.

Those hotspots spread, since the year 2018, "menuselect/configure" is touched as well, although its ".ac" file did not change: <https://github.com/asterisk/asterisk/commits/master/menuselect/configure>

I tested how much time it costs to avoid those hotspots and created a clean change: 45 minutes. If there are merge-conflicts, add again 45 minutes for each conflict. So, that is not feasible.

[1] 2014 Jul, first commit 4c21f69: #define LARGE_OFF_T (countless)
[2] 2016 Jun, first commit 2cad58c: runstatedir (15 times)