Re: maint.mk questions

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake wrote:
> Jim Meyering <jim <at> meyering.net> writes:
...
>> > Oh, and the --bootstrap-tools had better be something specified by cfg.mk,
> as
>> > m4 does not want bison in the list.
>>
>> Good idea.
>> If you do this, please add something in maint.mk
>> to ensure that the variable is defined.
>
> In the patch below, I went with bootstrap_tools ?= automake,autoconf,gnulib
>
> since the use of gnulib's maintainer-makefile guarantees those three.  Or did
> you want make to actually error out if cfg.mk doesn't specify a variable?

That looks fine.

>> Maybe we can just remove it.
>> I see there is no longer any use of move.if.change in coreutils.
>
> Done.  And no heartburn about dropping delta generation.
>
>> If you feel like preparing a patch for the above, that'd be great.
>
> How about the following?  I've tested that a VPATH m4 build using this patch 
> at
> least gets started on 'make syntax-check' (although I'm now having to edit
> local-checks-to-skip and add .x-sc_ files to skip files like config.guess).  I
> would also need to provide a followup patch to coreutils' cfg.mk.
>
> In the case of m4, I've got a gnulib submodule, so I created a git symlink 
> from
> my build-aux/config.guess into gnulib's copy.  Coreutils doesn't fail the
> sc_space_tab check because config.guess is not under version control (rather,
> it is copied into place during bootstrap), but because m4 maintains it as a
> symlink under version control, VC_LIST thinks it needs to be checked for
> syntax, even though it is an upstream file not subject to the same rules.
> Would it be worth changing vc-list-files to not follow git symlinks,
> particularly if those symlinks point into git submodules?

Yes, it sounds like that would be worthwhile -- at least to you.

> From: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:54:03 -0600
> Subject: [PATCH] maint.mk: import improvements from m4
>
> * top/maint.mk (VC-tag): Use signing key from cfg.mk.
> (move_if_change): Delete unused macro.
> (news-date-check, vc-diff-check): Support VPATH builds.
> (announcement): Likewise.  Split --bootstrap-tools list...
> (boostrap-tools): ...into separate list, which can be overridden
> in cfg.mk.
> (sc_avoid_if_before_free): Point to $(gnulib_dir), rather than
> requiring dependency on useless-if-before-free module.
> (VC_LIST): Likewise for vc-list-files module.  Support VPATH
> builds.

Looks fine to me.
I'll test it as soon as you commit.
Thanks!