Re: Current CVS doesn't bootstrap

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 11:43:41 -0600 (CST)
> From: Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> 
> Most of the time the problems caused by omitting `make maintainer-clean'
> are not that bootstrapping fails, but that various bugs occur while
> running the bootstrapped Emacs.

The right way to solve this is to make a list of dependencies between
Lisp files.  Perhaps we could have a Lisp function that would glean
such a list and put them into lisp/Makefile.

> Usually, people have not the slightest
> idea that these bugs are caused by failure to run `make maintainer-clean'.
> I remember having seen many examples of fake bug reports caused by this.

Are you saying that a bootstrap should always be preceded by a "make
maintainer-clean"?  If so, why doesn't "make bootstrap" does the
equivalent of "make maintainer-clean" automatically?

> I have a 1.7 dual Xeon.  That was a pretty fast machine when I bought
> it three years ago, but today, just about any computer I see
> advertised is faster and you can easily get something twice as fast.
> On my machine, the entire:
> 
> make maintainer-clean
> ./configure
> make bootstrap
> 
> takes less than 15 minutes.  Omitting the `make maintainer-clean'
> probably saves about 7 of those 15 minutes and (to me) that is not
> worth worrying about the potential bugs it introduces.

Please don't try to convince me that maintainer-clean doesn't slow
down the bootstrap: it does, BIG TIME, at least in my experience.

> I propose, for now, the following patch to INSTALL.CVS.

I think your additions to INSTALL.CVS are too voluminous.  I'd simply
say something like

  Normally, it is not necessary to use "make bootstrap" after every CVS
  update.  Unless there are problems, we suggest the following
  procedure:
  
    $ ./configure
    $ make

  If this fails, do:
 
  make maintainer-clean
  ./configure
  make bootstrap

(Btw, I still didn't see any explanation why a "cvs up" that updates
easymenu.el causes a failure to load cl-macs, which was the specific
problem I reported.  Without seeing such an explanation, this entire
argument sounds a bit academic to me.)