Re: Instructions on new bootstrap?

[Bruno Haible]

Paul Smith wrote:
> Are there instructions on how the new model of bootstrap is supposed to
> be used somewhere?  I can't quite figure it out.
> 
> I pulled in the latest gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap and ran it, then when
> it was complete git shows:
> 
> Changes not staged for commit:
>         modified:   bootstrap
> 
> Untracked files:
>         autogen.sh
>         autopull.sh
>         bootstrap-funclib.sh

I would recommend to
  * commit all these 4 files in your package's repository,
  * document in the 'HACKING' or 'README-hacking' file that the developer
    has more control over the bootstrap process by running
      ./autopull.sh
      ./autogen.sh
    in two steps, rather than './bootstrap' all in one step.
    autopull.sh is a script for fetching auxiliary files that are omitted from
    the version control repository.
    autogen.sh is a script for regenerating all autogeneratable files. This
    script does not make network accesses nor destructive git operations.

> Looking at bootstrap now it was replaced with gnulib/top/bootstrap and
> these extra files were added.  It would be nice if, at least, I could
> have these files put somewhere besides my root directory.

autopull.sh and autogen.sh are intentionally in the root directory, because
the developer runs them every day.

bootstrap-funclib.sh could technically be moved to a subdirectory, but this
is a bit hairy to implement (because it requires parsing configure.ac in order
to find the $build_aux directory).

> So I went and looked at the build-aux/bootstrap and it says:
> 
>   # Set this to true in bootstrap.conf to enable --bootstrap-sync by
>   # default.
>   bootstrap_sync=false
>     ...
>     --bootstrap-sync)
>       bootstrap_sync=true;;
>     ...
> 
> which seems to imply that unless I add that flag or set bootstrap_sync
> in my bootstrap.conf file (which I did not), the sync won't happen.

In your case, the sync already happened. So, either you must have had
  bootstrap_sync=true
in your bootstrap.conf, or you passed the option --bootstrap-sync manually.

Bruno