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Re: Add 'Required Tools' to README?


From: Eric Blake
Subject: Re: Add 'Required Tools' to README?
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:47:41 -0600
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According to Bruno Haible on 4/3/2007 7:50 PM:
> Eric Blake wrote:
>> I tweaked some of the
>> wording: since cc and make are used by the end user, while the rest of the
>> tools are developer-only, using native cc and make instead of gcc and
>> gmake helps test portability.
> 
> As you like. But I don't agree with two of these changes:
> 
>> +  + VPATH builds often need GNU make 3.79.1 or newer.
> 
> Please, can you remove that word 'often'? I'm not going to modify gnulib
> for the sake of half-baken VPATH "implementations".

Sure.  Done.

> 
> Ultimately, you know better than anyone else what's in which version of GNU 
> m4,
> but when I read this:
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2006-12/msg00247.html
> or the m4/NEWS of
> 
> 1.4.9:
>   * Fix a regression introduced in 1.4.8 that made m4 dump core when
>     invoked as 'm4 -- file'.

not tickled by autoconf

> 1.4.7:
>   * Fix regression from 1.4.5 in handling a file that ends in a macro
>     expansion without arguments instead of a newline.

not tickled if all our .m4 end in a newline (and they all should, since
they are text files, and text files that don't end in newline have other
portability problems)

> 1.4.6:
>   * Fix buffer overruns in regexp and patsubst macros when handed a trailing
>     backslash in the replacement text, or when handling \n substitutions
>     beyond the number of \(\) groups.

not tickled by any regular expressions in current use in autoconf or
gnulib, but if your distro doesn't ship 1.4.6 or newer, they don't care
much about security issues

>   * Fix memory leak in regexp, patsubst, and changeword macros.
>   * When loading frozen files, m4 now exits with status 63 if version
>     mismatch is detected.
> 
> it makes me feel uncomfortable with any version < 1.4.7. Especially your
> memory leak fixes had a tremendous positive effect on my machine.

In my testing, the performance gain for the memory leak fix was in the
noise on cygwin (but then again, forks are SO expensive that pretty much
everything else is in the noise).  I'm comfortable with 1.4.5 as the
minimum required, which is why CVS autoconf requires 1.4.5 but recommends
1.4.8 or later.  This list is only the hard dependencies, not the
recommendations; otherwise, I would bump autoconf to 2.61 rather than
2.59.  I'm rewording it as follows:

| diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
| diff --git a/DEPENDENCIES b/DEPENDENCIES
| index f120751..367dc23 100644
| --- a/DEPENDENCIES
| +++ b/DEPENDENCIES
| @@ -9,8 +9,8 @@ The following packages are needed by maintainers for
using 'gnulib-tool':
|      ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/
|
|  * A 'make' utility.
| -  + Mandatory, platform make gives good portability exposure.
| -  + VPATH builds often need GNU make 3.79.1 or newer.
| +  + Mandatory, platform make gives good portability exposure for
| +    in-tree builds, but VPATH builds require GNU make 3.79.1 or newer.
|    + GNU Make Homepage:
|      http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
|    + Download:
| @@ -18,9 +18,7 @@ The following packages are needed by maintainers for
using 'gnulib-tool':
|      ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/
|
|  * GNU m4 1.4.5 or newer.
| -  + Mandatory.
| -    Autoconf 2.62 requires GNU m4 1.4.5 or newer, and Autoconf 2.61
triggers
| -    bugs in GNU m4 < 1.4.5.
| +  + 1.4.5 or newer is mandatory, but recommend 1.4.9 or newer.
|    + Homepage:
|      http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
|    + Download:

> 
>> A bit strong on the m4 requirements, since debian stable doesn't ship
>> 1.4.9 yet (I only released it last month :).
> 
> It's irrelevant what Debian ships: users who have access to the gnulib
> git or cvs repository also have access to ftp.gnu.org and can install
> new versions of GNU software.

Yes, but there is also something to be said for out-of-the-box development
and its ability to attract further contributions.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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