Re: new major release?

[John W. Eaton]

On 25-Nov-2009, John W. Eaton wrote:

| On 25-Nov-2009, Rik wrote:
| 
| | Could I plead for a week delay on the gnulib introduction?  I am still
| | digesting the wholesale switch to Autotools.  Over the last few days
| | I've checked in a few changes to the automake files and there is still
| | more to do.  I would like Octave to pass 'make distcheck' before we
| | introduce the next round of changes to the build environment with gnulib.
| 
| OK.  I haven't tried distcheck yet, so maybe I should also do that and
| fix what I can.  Would it be OK to make the leap to using gnulib
| modules once it does pass distcheck?

We are still not quite passing "make distcheck".  When I try it, I see
the following problem:

  make[3]: Entering directory 
`/scratch/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/_build/doc/interpreter'
  restore=: && backupdir=".am$$" && \
          am__cwd=`pwd` && CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd 
../../../doc/interpreter && \
          rm -rf $backupdir && mkdir $backupdir && \
          if (/bin/sh /home/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/missing --run 
makeinfo --version) >/dev/null 2>&1; then \
            for f in ../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info 
../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info-[0-9] 
../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info-[0-9][0-9] 
../../../doc/interpreter/octave.i[0-9] 
../../../doc/interpreter/octave.i[0-9][0-9]; do \
              if test -f $f; then mv $f $backupdir; restore=mv; else :; fi; \
            done; \
          else :; fi && \
          cd "$am__cwd"; \
          if /bin/sh /home/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/missing --run 
makeinfo   -I ../../../doc/interpreter \
           -o ../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info 
../../../doc/interpreter/octave.texi; \
          then \
            rc=0; \
            CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd ../../../doc/interpreter; \
          else \
            rc=$?; \
            CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd ../../../doc/interpreter && \
            $restore $backupdir/* `echo 
"./../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info" | sed 's|[^/]*$||'`; \
          fi; \
          rm -rf $backupdir; exit $rc
  mkdir: cannot create directory `.am24407': Permission denied
  ../../../doc/interpreter/octave.texi: No such file or directory
  make[3]: *** [../../../doc/interpreter/octave.info] Error 1
  make[3]: Leaving directory 
`/scratch/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/_build/doc/interpreter'
  make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
  make[2]: Leaving directory 
`/scratch/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/_build/doc'
  make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
  make[1]: Leaving directory `/scratch/jwe/build/octave/octave-3.3.50+/_build'
  make: *** [all] Error 2

If I make the doc directory tree writable in the build tree where I'm
trying to run "make distcheck", it seems to work.  So I can't tell
whether this is a bug in the automake rules, or a problem with our
Makefile rules.

Although I would like to make it so that we pass distcheck and comply
with the GNU coding standards about not requiring users to have
Texinfo to build an Octave  distribution, we were already breaking
that rule with the old build system.

So I'm ready to make the changes needed to use gnulib functions in
Octave.  Are there any further objections to doing that?

jwe