Re: init.sh and C tests

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Jim,

> Currently I've been creating a tiny script like this for each
> program I want to wrap, git-adding it, and listing it in Files:, too.
> Taking test-areadlink-with-size as an example,
> 
>     #!/bin/sh
>     . "${srcdir=.}/init.sh"; path_prepend_ .
>     test-areadlink-with-size
>     Exit $?
> 
> ----------------------------------
> Obviously, that can be automated.
> I'm thinking of adding something like this for use
> in any module that uses init.sh as a trivial wrapper:
> 
> GL_emit_init_sh_wrapper =                     \
>   t=`echo $@|sed 's,.*/,,;s/\.sh$$//'`;               \
>   printf '%s\n'                                       \
>     '#!/bin/sh'                                       \
>     '. "$${srcdir=.}/init.sh"; path_prepend_ .'       \
>     "$$t"'; Exit $$?' > address@hidden && chmod a+x address@hidden && mv 
> address@hidden $@
> 
> Then, an individual module file could add these lines:
> 
> CLEANFILES += test-areadlink-with-size.sh
> test-areadlink-with-size.sh:
>       $(GL_emit_init_sh_wrapper)
> ...
> What do you think of adding the definition of GL_emit_init_sh_wrapper
> at the top of each gnulib.mk file?

Of course you can have a script for generating them somewhere on your disk,
or as a gnulib.mk rule. But I would add the files test-areadlink-with-size.sh
in git and not put them in CLEANFILES.

I would avoid to have generated source which is not present after
the user has run "configure". A few extra files in a tarball are
much better than added complexity during "make".

8 years ago, when I ported glibc to the FreeBSD kernel, I was greatly
confused by the fact that essential source files - the implementation
of functions like read(), open(), clone(), etc. - were generated on the
fly, parametrized by a table with many parameters. On top of that,
these source files were removed immediately after they were compiled.
That meant, when I grepped the entire source tree for the implementation
of read(), I did not find any.

In other words, removing actual source files from git and from tarballs,
combined with added complexity to generate them, makes it hard to fiddle with
a package that you are not familiar with.

Bruno