Re: gnulib.mk & bootstrap confusion

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Reuben!

On 23 Jul 2011, at 05:50, Reuben Thomas wrote:
> build-aux/bootstrap seems to use gnulib.mk rather than Makefile.am,
> and further to hardwire this choice. This is what bootstrap-using
> projects like coreutils seem to use. But I can't find it documented
> anywhere; am I missing something? If not, a note in the manual might
> be nice.


About a year ago, I completely rewrote the bootstrap script to be
considerably more straight forward and extensible, while factoring
out the (then at least - I haven't looked again recently) many ad-hoc
changes in coreutils, bison, tar and m4. Hardcoding of gnulib.mk and
others is one of the many shortcomings I addressed in the rewrite.

Instructions are in the script.  I had planned to roll a decent patch
transposing those instructions into the manual, but due to lack of
interest, I kept it as is.  It's been working admirably in my own
projects, by adding it to gnulib-local so that gnulib-tool picks it
up instead of the upstream gnulib supplied script.  I also have the
bootstrap.conf files to port (circa Sept 2010) coreutils, bison, tar,
m4 and libtool trees to use the rewritten bootstrap.  There is, of
course, more code overall, but the bootstrap.conf files are the only
bespoke parts with everything in bootstrap itself shared between all
projects that use it.

If you have any interest in using it, or some more encouragement to
spur me back into trying to have it adopted upstream I'd be happy to
hear back from you!

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)