Re: gnulib integration how to

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Ben,

Ben Walton wrote:
> I sent this to Jim last night as he's listed as the owner of gnulib on
> savanah, but he suggested I send this to you (and bug-gnulib).

Yes, things like this are suitable for public discussion.

> A while back I wrote a 'how to integrate gnulib'[1] tutorial that was
> aimed at the OpenCSW maintainer community.  We package software for
> Solaris so gnulib is a huge benefit to us.  We quite often encounter
> packages that require gnulib support in order to build.
>
> Is this document of any value to the project in terms of inclusion on
> the website or in doc/?

Two things:

1) From the perspective of a distributor of packages for a specific
   platform, the libposix subproject of gnulib (see
   
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/POSIX-Substitutes-Library.html>
   and gnulib/STATUS-libposix) should be of interest to you.
   In the long run, this will be more economic for you than modifying
   the configuration of dozens of packages.

2) Your writeup has ca. 80% overlap with the gnulib documentation,
   10% is specific to OpenCSW, and 10% is generic text not yet handled
   by the gnulib documentation.

   What is, in general, the value of a smaller documentation when a more
   extensive documentation already exists? Answer: The fact that it is
   smaller. Faster to read. So, there is a value in linking from the gnulib
   manual to your writeup.

   But if we have a GNU package's documentation that starts to link to
   related doc pieces, it will be likely that some of these linked-to
   docs become out-of-date. So, before our manual can link to your
   doc, your text should make it prominently clear when it was last
   updated. IMO the currently location of that hint (near the bottom,
   between a Google ad and a Wikidot ad, with a tiny font) is not sufficient.
   The right place for such a note is between the title and the body.

   Other than that, the idea of section "Knowing When gnulib is Helpful"
   could be helpful for the Gnulib section "2.1 Finding modules". But that
   section should also mention GNULIB_POSIXCHECK, since that is the preferred
   way of finding which gnulib modules are helpful (with this method, you
   don't need e.g. a HP-UX machine to find which modules are needed for HP-UX).

> I'd like to clean up issues you see even if you don't
> think it's worth linking to or including.

I'm running out of time on this now; someone else can comment, please?

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Kurt Gerron <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gerron>