Comment 6 for bug 1457651

So, configure is run to make the makefiles.

however, vala is run to convert .vala files into .c files at make dist
time.
So, what happens is that

* you initially run configure and automake to get makefiles

* you run make dist; that runs vala and produces tar files.

Later someone unpacks those tar files and runs configure and make.
They don't run vala again; they use the .c files from the tarball.
They don't even need vala installed.

So, the set of vapis you link against is chosen by that original
configure time, *not* by the second configure.

Centos cares a lot more about make dist than Debian does to a certain
extent, although it's fairly bad form for the build process to overwrite
one .c file shipped in the upstream tarball with another generated at
build time, even on Debian.
On Centos, I'm somewhat concerned it may be worse than bad form and
actually cause problems.

--Sam