bootstrap fails for mingw build (requires git!?)

[John W. Eaton]

On 20-Jan-2011, benjamin lindner wrote:

| I tried to build octave for MinGW platform with latest tip, but
| bootstrapping now fails, since apparently this now requires git
| available.
| The fail is introduced with this changeset (rev 11521)
| http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/00fe5069b70e
| 
| Going back to rev 11520 everything works fine.
| 
| I used to invoke autoconf as
| ./autogen.sh --gnulib-srcdir=path/to//gnulib --skip-po --copy
| but this now yields the error:
| 
|   bootstrapping...
|   Error: 'git' not found
| 
|   Please install the prerequisite programs
| 
| I also tried to add the option '--no-bootstrap-sync' with no success.
| 
| Is there a way to use gnulib *without* requiring git?
| Or am I using the bootstrap script the wrong way around?

Does your gnulib directory have a subdirectory named .git in it?  If
so, try moving that aside and see if it works then.

If you'd like for there to be an option to pass to bootstrap to
accomplish the same thing, then request that from the gnulib
maintainers, or submit a patch for the bootstrap script to them and
explain why it is needed.  Are you using git to pull the gnulib
sources on another system, and using them on one that does not have
git installed?  That seems like it could be a fairly common thing to
do, so having an option that would not require you to remove or rename
the .git subdirectory seems like a useful thing.

jwe