Re: Files from gnulib

[Jim Meyering]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
...
>> It is easy to run 'find' as part of the process that makes a
>> distribution, and to put its output into config.bat or the
>> equivalent, so there is no need to run 'find' under MS-DOS.
>
> More complications.  This means, for example, that to test an
> arbitrary revision of the development tree, I will need to run
> make-dist on Unix, create a tarball, copy it to a DOS machine, then
> build, find problems, go back to the Unix machine, etc.

Nah.  You wouldn't have to test at all,
because it could be automated.  See below.

>> > Perhaps it's possible to solve all this in a satisfactory manner, but
>> > doing so would require a lot of work,
>>
>> I don't think it'd take much work to do the above.  I can write
>> scripts to do the check and to do the find, since they can all be done
>> on a standard GNU platform.  What else is needed?
>
> Maintenance.

[assuming something like doslfn is too buggy -- have you tried it? ]

We could write an 8.3 conflict-checking Makefile rule and add
it as a dependent of "check".  Then any new file that conflicts
would be detected immediately, and whoever added it would
deal with the failed "make check" by renaming their file or
by adding a DOS-renaming rule.

>> > And what about the emacs-25.chg file?  Would you expect users to
>> > google for it as well, and copy-paste it into their shell window?
>>
>> No, I would expect users to extract it from the tarball much as
>> is already done with GDB and djunpack.bat.  That's simple, and it
>> would work.
>
> How can instructions that need to be googled for be simple and
> reliable?
>
>> >> For example, it should be pretty easy to check emacs-25.chg
>> >> automatically; is that done with GDB?
>> >
>> > Yes, it is done.  But it doesn't catch all the errors.
>>
>> How is that checking done, and what errors doesn't it catch?
>
> It's done by the ARI script.

I didn't find any script in GDB named ARI, but do see
many references to ARI in ChangeLogs.

> All I know about the errors is that some files still clash.

All that means is that there's room for improvement.
No need to reject that solution because it's not yet perfect.