Re: recent gnulib changes require coreutils adaptations

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Comparing the differences in the sh -x output should
>> help us get to the bottom of this.
>
> Yes, thanks, that did the trick.
>
> It turns out that my personal "ls" defaults to "ls -A" (this is an old
> security-related habit of mine), but the coreutils bootstrap procedure
> (accidentally or deliberately? I can't easily tell which) relies on
> the fact that "ls" does not output file names beginning with ".".  The
> following patch ports to my personal environment (which I hope you
> don't mind supporting).

If it were anyone else, I'd simply tell them to use a function or shell
alias instead, so that it wouldn't interfere with non-interactive uses.
But since it's you, I'll make an exception :-)

> The more worrisome aspect here is that the current bootstrap
> environment seems to assume that gnulib file names won't start with
> ".".  Is that a safe assumption in the future?

Maybe not.  If/when gnulib starts distributing files with such
names, we can address it,... assuming bootstrap even exists.