Re: convert regex.c, strftime.c mktime.c to standard C

[Sam Steingold]

> * Chong Yidong <address@hidden> [2010-11-19 11:58:12 -0500]:
>
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Finding strftime.c in gnulib is indeed trivial, but making it part of
>> Emacs that compiles on all supported platforms is not just "some
>> work", it's a formidable job, IMO.
>>
>> The build system used by gnulib is not just Makefile.in and
>> config.h.in.  It is one of the more contrived build systems I've ever
>> seen, and it requires to run the configury stuff on each supported
>> platform, to get all the gazillions of preprocessor symbols defined
>> correctly.
>
> According to the Gnulib website,
>
>   Gnulib takes a different approach. Its components are intended to be
>   shared at the source level, rather than being a library that gets
>   built, installed, and linked against. Thus, there is no distribution
>   tarball; the idea is to copy files from Gnulib into your own source
>   tree.
>
> So if we're having trouble doing exactly what Gnulib was designed for,
> something is pretty badly wrong.

I use gnulib from clisp and I am "reasonably happy".

1. Use gnulib-tool script to extract the gnulib files and put them in
the right place. This process is geared towards projects which use
automake; clisp does not, however, it works okay anyway.

2. Beware of the "dependency creep": asking for a couple of files might
pull in a dozen. I.e., the best way to integrate with gnulib is to
delegate _all_ portability issues to it. The downside is that you are
likely to end up distributing most of gnu libc with emacs; you have to
monitor closely what gnulib is pulling in and bitch vociferously to the
gnulib people if you think that the dependency is unjustified.

PS. I am _not_ volunteering to hook gnulib into emacs.

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid)
http://www.memritv.org http://pmw.org.il http://palestinefacts.org
http://openvotingconsortium.org http://thereligionofpeace.com http://ffii.org
People hear what they want to hear and discard the rest.