Re: Using gnulib's maint.mk (and perhaps, using gnulib as a git submodule)

[Jim Meyering]

James Youngman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> According to James Youngman on 11/9/2009 3:09 AM:
>>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>>> [btw, the above check for unmarked-yet-translatable diagnostics is 
>>>> automated
>>>>  in gnulib's maint.mk.  If you're interested, running "make syntax-check"
>>>>  can detect problems like this;  to enable, use gnulib's 
>>>> maintainer-makefile
>>>>  module. ]
>>>
>>> Maybe it's useful to combine this with switching to tracking gnulib as
>>> a submodule instead of via import-gnulib.conf.   Eric, WDYT?
>>
>> Very much in favor - git submodule is more mature now, and is definitely a
>> nicer way of tracking exactly which version of gnulib we depend on.
>
> Good, let's go ahead.
>
> I'm sure there will be code that "make syntax-check" doesn't like (for
> example, whitespace at the ends of lines I'd assume).   So I'm sure
> we'll need to adopt some kind of phased approach.   I'm happy to do a
> significant share of that kind of work.  However, if you're willing
> I'd be happy for you to do the submodule change, since you've clearly
> done it before.

Good to hear it!

As an example of how to do that, see gzip.git.
I added this to its cfg.mk (included by GNUmakefile), since
for now the listed tests would fail, and fixing them wasn't a priority:

# Tests not to run as part of "make distcheck".
local-checks-to-skip =          \
  sc_error_message_period       \
  sc_error_message_uppercase    \
  sc_m4_quote_check             \
  sc_obsolete_symbols           \
  sc_program_name               \
  sc_prohibit_S_IS_definition   \
  sc_prohibit_atoi_atof         \
  sc_prohibit_stat_st_blocks    \
  sc_space_tab                  \
  sc_useless_cpp_parens

To stage things, just add the name of each initially-failing test
to that list, and as you find the time/desire to fix things, remove
each rule name when the code is ready to pass the corresponding test.