Re: [PATCH] maint: Allow gnulib's readutmp module to use systemd.

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> writes:

> Hi Simon and Collin,
>
>> > Could putting the following into bootstrap.conf be a method that
>> > we could recommend?  Then developers can override it with
>> > GNULIB_TOOL_IMPL=sh ./bootstrap if they want.
>> > 
>> > GNULIB_TOOL_IMPL=${GNULIB_TOOL_IMPL:-py}
>> 
>> I'd like to hear what Bruno thinks about this idea. I think this might
>> be a good starting point for real-world testing. Maybe we can disable
>> it by default in bootstrap.conf, but leave a comment saying it is a
>> work-in-progress and experimental?
>
> It's simpler than that: The GNULIB_TOOL_IMPL environment variable was
> designed in such a way that no autogen.sh and no bootstrap.conf needs
> modifications.
>
> As of today, any developer can set this environment variable to 'py'
> or 'sh+py' and see whether they get regressions.
>
> In a short while (when the test suite passes and Collin has tried it
> with a few more GNU packages), the likelihood of such regressions will
> be small, and it will be possible to *recommend* it.
>
> In a longer while, we will make GNULIB_TOOL_IMPL=py the default, and
> there will be nothing else to recommend, because everyone will get
> the benefit of the speedup.
>
> So, Simon, as a package maintainer:
>   - You can try it yourself,
>   - You can spread the work to your co-maintainers,
>   - But it's pointless to modify your autogen.sh or bootstrap.conf files.

While I agree with everything you said, I think that miss some common
use-cases for when ./bootstrap is used, including: 1) non-regular
developers who we want to be able to build things as quickly as possible
with no additional documentation and git clone + ./bootstrap +
./configure should work so they can contribute and write a patch easily,
and 2) continous integration building of projects, which is where I
think we would most likely catch any regressions in gnulib-tool.py the
quickest, at least for my projects.

I think it would be nice to find a method that we can recommend from the
gnulib project to other projects that wants to opt-in to gnulib-tool.py
today, so that everyone building these opt-in projects get exposed to
gnulib-tool.py and we (indirectly) get bug reports about any problems
early.

/Simon

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