Re: planning for beta-testing gnulib-tool.py

[Collin Funk]

Hi Bruno,

On 3/10/24 8:59 AM, Bruno Haible wrote:
> 4) There is a list of packages that use gnulib, in the file users.txt.
>    We can pick, say, the 10 most important or most active GNU packages among
>    these, and repeat step 3) for each of them.

I am still working on gnulib-tool.py.TODO and agree we shouldn't
recommend it until that is complete. However, gnulib-tool.py has
enough features implemented that it can be used to bootstrap many GNU
packages successfully. By successfully, I mean that I can run

$ ./bootstrap
./configure --prefix=$HOME/bin
make all && make check

and get the expected results. Doing this helps me diff the files and
stdout emitted by gnulib-tool vs gnulib-tool.py.

I like the plan of picking ~10 GNU packages and think it is a good
starting point that we can adjust if needed. Since the process is
useful for me anyways, I think it is best that go through the list of
packages in users.txt and try building them.

I am thinking that I should note which packages build successfully,
which ones don't (hopefully none, though that is unlikely), and maybe
a note if I notice anything strange. I think this should help us pick
projects that will work best for testing.

I can keep a file locally and just email it when we are ready for more
formal testing, or I can keep it in the git repository somewhere. Let
me know if you think this would be helpful.

Collin