Consider adding ability to specify custom autogen command for autotools sources

[mcatanzaro]

Consider adding ability to specify custom autogen command for autotools sources. Use-case: today I wanted to build autotools projects that do not distribute generated autotools build files in the release tarballs, i.e. the tarballs are git archives rather than 'make dist' products. Also, these projects do not have toplevel autogen.sh scripts. I was able to use this hack to get it to work:

       {
            "name" : "libsass",
            "sources" : [
                {
                    "type" : "archive",
                    "url" : "https://github.com/sass/libsass/releases/download/3.4.9/libsass-3.4.9.tar.gz",
                    "sha256" : "5588fd93fd03d3aabab5bfa44633b5faff5e7a72bed8f36d3544532495533a97"
                },
                {
                    "type" : "shell",
                    "commands" : [
                        "echo 'autoreconf --force --install' > autogen.sh",
                        "chmod +x autogen.sh"
                    ]
                }
            ]
        },

flatpak-builder could support nicer ways of doing this. JHBuild provides an autogen-sh attribute which accomplishes this, for example, as well as a couple more settings that can be useful. Would be nicer to be able to do something like this instead:

       {
            "name" : "libsass",
            "sources" : [
                {
                    "type" : "archive",
                    "autogen" : "autoreconf",
                    "url" : "https://github.com/sass/libsass/releases/download/3.4.9/libsass-3.4.9.tar.gz",
                    "sha256" : "5588fd93fd03d3aabab5bfa44633b5faff5e7a72bed8f36d3544532495533a97"
                }
            ]
        },

[TingPing]

I was able to use this hack to get it to work:

The proper solution is:

{
   "type": "script",
   "commands": [ "autoreconf -fi" ]
}

[tinywrkb]

Maybe add an autoreconf property that when set as true will imply rm-configure: true, and will execute autoreconf -fiv.

[outergod]

Also encountered this problem today. +1 from me.

[yihuajack]

Agree. This proposal is significantly useful