-DWEBHACKDEVEL for Gnus (was: Revision 103117 on the Emacs trunk.)

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:49:15 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote: 

>> From: Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>
>> Is it OK to bring the change back with gnus-overrides.texi and
>> -DWEBHACKDEVEL?  Or are there objections still?

EZ> I still think it's wrong to have a versioned file that needs to be
EZ> modified for some optional build.  

I absolutely agree.  But that is no longer the case.
gnus-overrides.texi is a static file now, intended for generic
Gnus-related @set commands and currently empty.

On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:06:23 +0100 address@hidden (Peter Münster) wrote: 

PM> I know that make can do whatever you want,

Oh, I wish that was true, but `make' is horribly limited.  Unfortunately
it's just good enough to make hacks on top of it popular.

On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:50:28 +0100 Andreas Schwab <address@hidden> wrote: 

AS> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> You mean, without any files to @include in the manuals?  If so, that's
>> what I suggested way back in the thread, but was told (I think by Ted)
>> that the included file allowed for more than just @set directives, and
>> that this additional flexibility, which is impossible to replace with
>> the -DFOO options to makeinfo, is anticipated to be needed in the
>> future.

AS> Which is of course a bogus argument, since you can always add more
AS> @ifset controls to the texi file.

Andreas, can you explain which argument is bogus?  There are three in
the cited paragraph.  If you're referring to my justification for
gnus-overrides.texi that Eli explained, can you explain how you'd rather
do it?  For example, how would you set 20 GNUS_x variables efficiently
for all the Gnus manuals (keeping in mind the same process has to work
for Gnus and Emacs both)?

Thanks
Ted