Re: FYI: 3 small patches

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:

> According to Jim Meyering on 4/22/2008 8:28 AM:
> | Without a guard like this, it is far too easy to apply a patch
> | prepared against a preceding release, and not notice that a NEWS
> | entry is inserted into the wrong block.
> | * maint.mk (sc_immutable_NEWS): New rule.
> | (update-NEWS-hash): New rule to update the hard-coded hash.
> |
> | +
> | +# Ensure that we don't accidentally insert an entry into an old NEWS block.
> | +old_NEWS_hash = c58d611d93d218181ed77f81ff2395ff  -
> | +sc_immutable_NEWS:
> | +   @if test -f $(srcdir)/NEWS; then                                \
> | +     test "$(NEWS_hash)" = '$(old_NEWS_hash)' && : ||              \
> | +       { echo '$(ME): you have modified old NEWS' 1>&2; exit 1; }; \
> | +   fi
> | +
> | +# Update the hash stored above.  Do this after each release.
> | +update-NEWS-hash: NEWS
> | +   perl -pi -e 's/^(old_NEWS_hash = ).*/$${1}'"$(NEWS_hash)/" $(ME)
>
> Nice rule.  However, two concerns here.  First, how do you intend to share
> maint.mk with other projects, when the NEWS hash to coreutils is now
> hardcoded in here?  Shouldn't the hash be stored in cfg.mk instead?
> Second, what happens if a typo correction is made in the old NEWS?  I
> guess that means manually updating the hash to account for the intentional
> changes (or maybe running 'make update-NEWS-hash' after ensuring that all
> I changed was a typo fix).

BTW, here's what I've just pushed:

>From d9c1b8fd30a36d7f05cfb8f830dc62765cf60792 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <address@hidden>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:28:33 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] build: move a project-specific definition to cfg.mk

* cfg.mk (old_NEWS_hash): Define here, ...
* maint.mk: ... not here.
(update-NEWS-hash): Update comment.
Suggestion from Eric Blake.

Signed-off-by: Jim Meyering <address@hidden>
---
 cfg.mk   |    2 ++
 maint.mk |    7 ++++---
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/cfg.mk b/cfg.mk
index 61c3bc5..6b039c5 100644
--- a/cfg.mk
+++ b/cfg.mk
@@ -39,3 +39,5 @@ gnulib_dir = /gnulib

 # Now that we have better (check.mk) tests, make this the default.
 export VERBOSE = yes
+
+old_NEWS_hash = c58d611d93d218181ed77f81ff2395ff  -
diff --git a/maint.mk b/maint.mk
index e2a8e1c..66f6d5d 100644
--- a/maint.mk
+++ b/maint.mk
@@ -431,16 +431,17 @@ NEWS_hash = \
      $(srcdir)/NEWS | md5sum -)

 # Ensure that we don't accidentally insert an entry into an old NEWS block.
-old_NEWS_hash = c58d611d93d218181ed77f81ff2395ff  -
 sc_immutable_NEWS:
        @if test -f $(srcdir)/NEWS; then                                \
          test "$(NEWS_hash)" = '$(old_NEWS_hash)' && : ||              \
            { echo '$(ME): you have modified old NEWS' 1>&2; exit 1; }; \
        fi

-# Update the hash stored above.  Do this after each release.
+# Update the hash stored above.  Do this after each release and
+# for any corrections to old entries.
 update-NEWS-hash: NEWS
-       perl -pi -e 's/^(old_NEWS_hash = ).*/$${1}'"$(NEWS_hash)/" $(ME)
+       perl -pi -e 's/^(old_NEWS_hash = ).*/$${1}'"$(NEWS_hash)/" \
+         $(srcdir)/cfg.mk

 # Ensure that the c99-to-c89 patch applies cleanly.
 patch-check:
--
1.5.5.1.68.gbdcd8