Re: M4

[Akim Demaille]

[Cc'ed to some lists.]

>>>>> "Gary" == Gary V Vaughan <address@hidden> writes:

Gary> Salut!

Gettextized Gary :)



Gary> I haven't looked at that stuff much... I didn't arrive until
Gary> about 1.4n or so.  But changing the semantics when 1.4 is so
Gary> well established is definitely a bug.

Well, it is not very clearly written somewhere, but when you read the
meaning of --error-output,

  -o, --error-output=FILE      redirect debug and trace output

it seems quite clear dumpdef etc. have nothing to do here.  AFAICS,
this is a side effect of nice factorization: dumpdef uses
M4_DEPBUG_PRINTF and the like, which are bound to -o.  So it does seem
like a nice things from the code point of view, but the dirty side
effect is pollution of -o.

Gary> I have a not-yet-building working directory which holds a fair
Gary> few enhancements from several months ago which I need to clean
Gary> up and check in.

That would be great!  There are several problems with GNU M4
currently.  The most painful AFAIC is obstack.h.  You sure don't run a
system with a native obstack.h :)  Because then you'd have seen that,
yes, when you have it, no m4/obstacks.h is installed, so the
compilation fails (we want m4/obstack.h, but only
/usr/include/obstack.h is there).

I first thought creating m4/obstack.h as a mere #include <obstack.h>
was fine, but it is not: then you need #include_next, which I don't
think is portable.

Currently, I see no simple idea to have it work for both the being
built m4, and the installed headers.

>> I have also found benign issues, ANSIfication to perform etc.

Gary> Okay.  I guess you are aware of my views on ANSI style after the
Gary> Goat Book debates? ;-) I won't labour the point except to say
Gary> that bootstrap tools need to be portable to non-ANSI
Gary> environments.

Well, my problem is about aesthetics: some files have mixed style.

Gary> And GCC requires Autoconf requires GNU M4.

Huh?  GCC does come with its configure, no?  Sounds weird to me for
GCC to require Autoconf.

>> So my question is: what are the ML to use, what's the policy for
>> patches etc.

Gary> Rene has a very silent list at address@hidden, and there is
Gary> a address@hidden  Since writing the book will almost certainly
Gary> generate a lot of M4 traffic, and since M4 is now hosted at
Gary> savannah I think we should create the usual address@hidden,
Gary> address@hidden and address@hidden to complement bug-m4.
Gary> What do you think?

You read in my mind.  That's exactly what I would have liked.  I
suggest subscribing René's list to address@hidden

Gary> I am happy to take an informal `commit bug fixes with an fyi to
Gary> m4-patches, but ask for commit approval for features or
Gary> changes'.  

Definitely.

I would like to clean up the package a little bit:

add config/Makefile.am  to make it a regular package
require 2.52


Gary> I haven't heard from Rene in quite literally years (well, one at
Gary> least), but I think it would be polite to subscribe
Gary> address@hidden to at least address@hidden

Ahem...  Sorry, I should have read until the end :)