Re: safer way to use gnulib

[Michael D. Godfrey]

On 2/20/10 11:49 AM, John W. Eaton wrote:

On 20-Feb-2010, John W. Eaton wrote:

| On 20-Feb-2010, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
| 
| | What do you think? It seems that in the current state of affairs
| | gnulib actually makes Octave less portable than before.
| 
| Please see the following thread on the gnulib mailing list:
| 
|   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-02/msg00113.html
| 
| The last method proposed in that thread would allow us to use gnulib
| without having to modify Octave, and it would avoid the problems we
| have with the rpl_ definitions.

Looking at the thread in the archive, I realize that it may be a bit
confusing to know precisely which messages I'm talking about here.
The "last method proposed" is here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-02/msg00142.html

and Bruno Haible's response is here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-02/msg00143.html

jwe
  

This proposal sounds like a significant improvement.  Would it be feasible to consider
a "simple" portability test program to verify that this approach will work on a selected
list of systems, and to use when starting a port to a new combination of OS, compiler, libraries?
The method description seems to be a start toward this.  This could be run  in ./configure or make
before starting the full compile.  Better to learn about problems up front than 20 minutes later.

Also, for information, the following link:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/C___Portability_Guide

reports on the problems ans solutions found by the Mozilla group.  Everyone may have seen
this already, but it pointed out problems I had not seen...  At least, a good place to
check when a new problem pops up.

Michael