MySQL Bugs: #58260: Source tarball contains broken symlinks instead of files

Bug #58260	Source tarball contains broken symlinks instead of files
Submitted:	17 Nov 2010 15:46	Modified:	17 Nov 2010 20:42
Reporter:	John Bollinger	Email Updates:
Status:	Duplicate	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Workbench	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	5.2.29	OS:	Any
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	build

Description:
The MySQL Workbench 5.2.29 source tarball, as downloaded from wb.mysql.com on 2010-Nov-17, contains broken symlinks mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/depcomp,
mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/install-sh, and mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/missing instead of actual files.  As a result, the package cannot be compiled -- or even configured -- unless the build system not only has automake 1.10 installed, but has its scripts in the location anticipated by the symlinks.  Example:

$ ./configure
configure: error: cannot find install-sh or install.sh in "." "./.." "./../.."

Note that the system on which the above error was generated does have automake 1.10, but it isn't in the location the symlinks point to.

It is unnecessary and nonstandard for an autoconf/automake-based build system to require autoconf and/or automake to be present on the build host to configure or build a package.  They should only be necessary to _maintain_ the package and its build system.

How to repeat:

1) Unpack the source tarball mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src.tar.gz on a system without Automake installed, or with it installed such that its scripts are somewhere other than /usr/share/automake-1.10/.

2) Change to the Workbench source directory

3) Attempt to configure the package via ./configure

Suggested fix:
To fix this problem, the autotools' option to install local copies of their various scripts should be used to ensure that the source distribution contains the scripts themselves instead of symlinks.  (Note that this already seems to be working for autoconf and libtool -- only automake's scripts are relying on links.)

Correction: the host on which the example error was generated has Automake 1.11 installed, not Automake 1.10.  That explains why the symlinks were not resolvable.  That does not change the fact that building the package should not require Automake to be present at all on the build host.

The same issue occurs also for these files:

mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/ext/yassl/taocrypt/config.guess
mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/ext/yassl/taocrypt/install-sh
mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/ext/yassl/taocrypt/depcomp
mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/ext/yassl/taocrypt/missing
mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.29-src/ext/yassl/taocrypt/config.sub

This is a duplicate of bug #58260