Re: bootstrap does not pass --force to autoreconf

[Gary V. Vaughan]

On 28 Dec 2012, at 18:00, Akim Demaille <address@hidden> wrote:
> Le 28 déc. 2012 à 10:35, "Gary V. Vaughan" <address@hidden> a écrit :
>> Salut Akim!
> 
> Hi Gary!  Long time no see :)

Too long! :)

>> My bootstrap rewrite (used by Libtool & Zile among others) has always
>> passed any `--force' from it's own command line along to all autoreconf
>> and libtoolize invocations it makes without any problems.
> 
> Can't all these bootstraps be merged?  Bison used to have a forked
> one too, but Joel's and Jim's efforts resulted Bison's using the
> stock bootstrap now.

Yes please!  I rewrote bootstrap from the ground up to meet shortcomings
that prevented gnulib bootstrap from being used by Libtool and M4, and from
being forked by tar, bison and others.  I studied every other bootstrap script
I could lay my hands on in the hope that the rewrite would be a strict super-
set of those.  I believe I succeeded.

Unfortunately, the result is very large (it has a lot to do!) and with my
frustration at having spent several months on it, and then not being able
to find someone with sufficient time to review the monster and push it to 
gnulib,
I upset a few important people with my rants :(  So, rather than continue to
annoy the good gnulib folks with my incessant pestering, I'm simply using the
rewrite in all my own projects, and helping a handful of other adopters make
the best use of it.

I still think that the rewrite is technically superior and much more
maintainable than the gnulib script, although gnulib bootstrap has definitely
closed the gap somewhat in the last year or two.  If you'd like to try it out, I
can update the bison bootstrap.conf I made in 2010 to work with the latest
git revisions of bison and bootstrap?

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