[wdiff-bugs] wdiff 0.5.91 pre-test released

[Denver Gingerich]

wdiff 0.5.91 is available at
http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/wdiff/wdiff-0.5.91.tar.gz or from CVS (tagged
RELEASE_0_5_91).  The major changes are completely new autotools
scripts (these scripts work with recent versions of the autotools) and
Gnulib integration.  Functionally, this version should be fairly close
to releasable.  I still need to update some non-functional components
such as the Makefiles and new scripts, which are currently lacking the
standard legal headers.  These will be updated in another pre-test in
the next few weeks.


Please test this version thoroughly on several architectures if you
can.  You can test it with the usual "make check".  If you have
additional tests you'd like to include, let me know and I'll look into
adding them.  Please send me a list of architectures/OSes that you've
tested on so I know where it works.

Here are some specific items to verify:
- make sure the translations work correctly
- verify that all information in the man and info pages looks correct
(ie. mailing list addresses, maintainer information, etc.)
- the package works as a normal package should; it performs
autotools-provided commands correctly (like "make check", "make
distclean", etc.)


I have decided to include the files generated by the autotools in the
CVS tree so that people don't have to bootstrap the checked out CVS
tree before doing the usual ./configure, make, make install.  However,
I will be including a bootstrap file to re-generate the auto-generated
files with autotools in order to update to new versions of the
autotools, for example.  This bootstrap file will be included in a
future pre-test.

If you're wondering why I've decided to do things this way, try
building GNU m4 from CVS.  After that experience, I think you'll
understand :).


The commit log, reproduced here, describes the changes in this release
in more detail:
- replaced old autotools scripts with new scripts created from scratch
 to work with more recent versions of the autotools
- replaced files in the lib directory with their Gnulib counterparts
- moved readpipe.c and writepipe.c to src because they Gnulib does not
  appear to provide equivalent functionality
- modified the test scripts to work with a more recent autom4te version
- some syntax was not recognized by the newer autom4te
- moved i18n directory to po and updated i18n files to reflect changes
 in gettext
- added man directory and necessary Makefiles to create man pages

This release also includes fixes for the following problems reported
by Santiago, which I forgot to include in the commit log (but they'll
be in the ChangeLog):
- dependency on non-existent README-alpha; the fix is a side-effect of
creating new autotools scripts
- warning in unify.c; corrected by adding "#include <string.h>"


There are a few oddities that I found when creating the package that
would be nice to get resolved if any of you know the answers.  They
are the following:

1. I copied most of the autotest framework from libtool.  There seems
to be a lot of autotest-related code that shouldn't be necessary (ie.
it should be as easy as "TESTS = ...").  Is this a common problem?

2. Why did tests/wdiff.m4 have "AT_DEFINE(OLD_WDIFF, 1)" with ifdefs
using OLD_WDIFF in the code?  What function did these serve?  I have
moved wdiff.m4 to wdiff.at and removed that code because it was
causing autom4te to fail.

3. Can directories in CVS be deleted?

4. Is the functionality of readpipe.c and writepipe.c available in a
more standard place?  It seems like this should be the sort of stuff
that Gnulib or something like it would handle.

5. When I check out wdiff from CVS and run "./configure", then "make",
the build system runs aclocal, automake, and autoconf, then runs
./configure again and finally proceeds with the usual "make".  Is that
normal?  If not, what is the usual way to fix it?


Let me know if you have any questions about the release.  Thanks.

Denver