Code review comment for lp:~bregma/frame/lp-966290

The distro packaging should be using --with autoreconf for all builds, which will run dh_autoreconf, which (a) always runs with --force, because that's the point and (2) uses md5 checksums and not serial numbers by default to avoid the problem you mention above. See dh_autoreconf(1).

The autogen.sh should use --force anyway until there is good reason not to, since it's the most desirable behaviour. I can add that.

All PPA/pbuilder/cowbuilder/sbuild/buildd builds are in an environment without a system-installed xorg-macros.m4 file. One could add xutils-dev as a build dependency or add libxorg-gtest-dev as a build dependency so it gets pulled in transitively (and assuming --with-autoreconf). Then again, the latter would also fix the whole daily build problem, assuming packaging builds have dh_auto_check disabled (like, say, having DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS contain "nocheck").

Would it be better to move the entire fix into the packaging?