Bison and cutting-edge support tools

[Paul Eggert]

Paul Hilfinger <address@hidden> writes:

> Bison really should not depend on having cutting-edge versions of
> support tools like autoconf, automake, and gettext!

One simple thing that would help fix some of the problem is for
maintainers to check in all the files that "./bootstrap" generates.
That way, someone who uses CVS Bison won't need to run bootstrap, and
won't need the cutting-edge tools unless they modify source files
(e.g. configure.ac) that would require using the tools.

The gettext 0.12.1 manual talks about this issue.  See:

http://www.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/info?(gettext.info)Files%20under%20CVS

which mentions these three approaches;

  1. All generated files are always committed into the repository.

  2. All generated files are committed into the repository occasionally,
     for example each time a release is made.

  3. Generated files are never committed into the repository.

Currently Bison is taking approach (3), but it sounds like you'd
prefer approach (1) or (2).  However, the gettext manual lists some
downsides of (1) and (2) as well.  Bison formerly used (2) but
switched to (3) at some point due to those problems.  Akim knows more
of the details here than I do.