Should autogen.sh be included in a tarball?

Question

I have seen many tarballs do not include an autogen.sh file, but I have seen it in some other tarballs.

What is the rationale for including or not including autogen.sh in a tarball?

Answer 1

If you're releasing a source distribution from some kind of release branch, then IMHO there is no need to include this.

autogen.sh should only be included in development releases.

Since you use it to generate ./configure and stuff, there is no need to do this in release packages.

Of course if you're targeting developers mainly, your audience may find autogen.sh files useful.

Answer 2

If your autogen/bootstap does more than what autoreconf does, then please, please, include it. It makes life much easier for people modifiying the released tarball (it might be necessary to re-autogen after a patch is applied).