Re: .cvsignore and .gitignore

[Reuben Thomas]

On Thu, 6 Nov 2008, Bruno Haible wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Reuben Thomas wrote:
> > There seem to be basically two classes of user when it comes to what is
> > ignored:
> >
> > 1. gnulib is considered as a build dependency, so no files provided or
> > generated by gnulib are put in CVS/git.
> >
> > 2. gnulib is not considered as a build dependency, so files provided by
> > gnulib are put in CVS/git, but files generated from them are not.
>
> Yes, this is also how the gnulib documentation, section "Issues with Version
> Control Systems", describes it.

This does not seem to be the case.

The gnulib documentation describes two types of build system:

a. All sources, generated or not, are put in VCS; use --no-vc-files. This 
differs from my case 2, where generated files are not checked in.

b. Same as my 1 above: no files provided or generated by gnulib are stored 
in VCS (except gnulib-cache.m4).

So, the documentation does not explain what --vc-files is for (in fact, it 
doesn't mention it). In case 1 (or b), --vc-files is not sufficient, as it 
does not include generated files. In case a, --no-vc-files is required. In 
case 2, --no-vc-files is also required, although this doesn't fully solve 
the problem either.

It seems that the easiest approach for me is to switch to case 1/b. Thus, 
gnulib becomes a build dependency, but only for git sources; for 
distributions, gnulib provides the needed rules to include all the sources. 
This is fine for me. Then, I still have to supplement the .gitignore files 
manually, but the worst that happens is that I get some ugly notices about 
uncontrolled files, rather than the current case, where I have the wrong 
files in git.

In summary:

i. What is --vc-files for? It doesn't seem to have a use, unless automake 
automatically supplies the rest of the list needed for case 1/b.

ii. It would be good if the gnulib docs explained that what I was trying to 
do was a bad idea, and why.

I'd be happy to help with the documentation issues here.

> The doc says that if you're a case 2, you can pass the option --no-vc-files
> to gnulib-tool. This will solve half of your problem.
>
> The other half is that you have files generated from "make" while you perform
> VCS operations, and you wish them to be added to .cvsignore or .gitignore.
> That is an issue you should bring up with the automake developers, IMO. If
> you were developing packages without gnulib, that use the automake
> BUILT_SOURCES variable, you would have the same problem.

This bit of the conversation I leave up to the automake developers!

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