Re: arg-nonnull.h & warn-on-use.h in build-aux

[Sam Steingold]

Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Sam Steingold on 2/23/2010 3:06 PM:
> > >  > I updated gnulib in clisp and gnulib-tool installed arg-nonnull.h &
> > >  > warn-on-use.h in src/build-aux.
> > >  > why aren't these files in the usual place (src/gllib), together with all
> > >  > the other headers?
> > >
> > > Because the versions in src/build-aux are templates, which get further
> > >  modified by a sed script during make, such that you end up using the
> > >  modified contents as the inline portion merged with *.in.h header
> > >  templates to form replacement headers in build/gllib.
> > I am not sure I see the fundamental difference.
>
> For warn-on-use.h, I was just following the precedence set by Bruno during
> arg-nonnull.h.  Beyond that, this is more of Bruno's question why he
> picked build-aux rather than gllib for the templates to live in,
> particularly given that our *.in.h templates live in gllib.

Bruno seems to be unwilling to step in.
Do I have a chance to convince you to move these headers to the gllib directory 
where all the other header templates reside?
Really, we used to have a nice separation of scripts in build-aux, sources and 
their templates in gllib, and m4 in glm4, and now we have a mixture of 
everything everywhere - do we really want that?

> > I want to enable my users to build clisp modules against an existing
> > system-wide clisp installation (and install the user-built modules in
> > their home directory), similar to the way cpan works for perl.
> >
> > since the configure files refer to some build-aux files, I have to
> > install those files when I install clisp.
>
> I'm not much of a fan of installing from build-aux; so it seems like you
> have a use case that deserves some refactoring on the gnulib side of
> things.  But at this point, I'm hoping Bruno can step in and comment.

again, Bruno is not willing to weigh in.
So far I managed to survive using
 AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([$cl_cv_clisp_libdir/build-aux])
It would be nice if you could help me to keep using gnulib.

> > I want to be able to add build_aux=.... to the $(MAKE) invocation
> > so that the file arg-nonnull.h & warn-on-use.h are found in the right place.
>
> In other words, the factorization allows you to override just $(build_aux)
> as needed.  But it depends on us being able to find a way to populate
> $(build_aux) with the correct default in the absence of your module setup,
> and is also only relevant if we can't come up with some better upstream
> layout in the first place.

well, if you tell automake to add
build_aux=$(top_srcdir)/src/build-aux
to Makefile.in, this would be solved.

note also, that you have

 depcomp = $(SHELL) $(top_srcdir)/$cl_cv_clisp_libdir/build-aux/depcomp

in the generated Makefile.in (broken, of course, but still - using my setup)
but

$(top_srcdir)/src/build-aux/arg-nonnull.h
$(top_srcdir)/src/build-aux/warn-on-use.h

in EXTRA_DIST - which is not consistent.

> > thanks!
> Thank you for clearing up some of my confusion.

thanks for taking your time to help me!

I would greatly appreciate it if you could accommodate my use case.
Sam.