Re: ASSERT macro

[Bruno Haible]

Eric Blake wrote:
> > It does not require a modification of gnulib-tool. tests/macros.h is not
> > different in principle than tests/nan.h; it's only used in more places.
> 
> But that means listing tests/macros.h in more than 100 modules/*-tests files. 
>  
> There comes a point where a file is so ubiquitous that we might as well make 
> its presence automatic.

In the long term, I would like to see gnulib-tool's scope become broader:
  1. Allow it to combine overrides from multiple --local-dirs,
  2. Obsolete gettextize, autopoint, and possibly also libtoolize.
For this to work, gnulib-tool needs to have no built-in knowledge about
particular modules any more. That's one of the reason why the 'Notices'
and 'Applicability' information were moved from gnulib-tool to the
module descriptions.

tests/macros.h is an incarnation of a particular coding style. Other people
may want different macros, tests/macros2.h. That's one reason not do it in
gnulib-tool.

The other reason is consistency with other #includes: When you #include "foo.h"
you know that you need to depend on the module 'foo' or have "foo.h" among the
list of files. If we would make an exception for tests/macros.h, it would
confuse people who try to understand how gnulib works.

Bruno