Re: gnulib.mk & bootstrap confusion

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Reuben,

On 23 Jul 2011, at 17:16, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2011, at 05:50, Reuben Thomas wrote:
>> build-aux/bootstrap seems to use gnulib.mk rather than Makefile.am,
>> and further to hardwire this choice. This is what bootstrap-using
>> projects like coreutils seem to use. But I can't find it documented
>> anywhere; am I missing something? If not, a note in the manual might
>> be nice.
> 
> 
> About a year ago, I completely rewrote the bootstrap script to be
> considerably more straight forward and extensible, while factoring
> out the (then at least - I haven't looked again recently) many ad-hoc
> changes in coreutils, bison, tar and m4. Hardcoding of gnulib.mk and
> others is one of the many shortcomings I addressed in the rewrite.
> 
> Instructions are in the script.  I had planned to roll a decent patch
> transposing those instructions into the manual, but due to lack of
> interest, I kept it as is.  It's been working admirably in my own
> projects, by adding it to gnulib-local so that gnulib-tool picks it
> up instead of the upstream gnulib supplied script.  I also have the
> bootstrap.conf files to port (circa Sept 2010) coreutils, bison, tar,
> m4 and libtool trees to use the rewritten bootstrap.  There is, of
> course, more code overall, but the bootstrap.conf files are the only
> bespoke parts with everything in bootstrap itself shared between all
> projects that use it.
> 
> If you have any interest in using it, or some more encouragement to
> spur me back into trying to have it adopted upstream I'd be happy to
> hear back from you!

I forgot to link the relevant posts from the gnulib archives:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-09/msg00033.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-10/msg00189.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-10/msg00271.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-04/msg00074.html

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)