Re: [bug-hello] hello and current autotools

[Jim Meyering]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) wrote:
> Thanks very much for the info and the patches!
>
>       AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
>
> Well, this is a question -- is it better for GNU packages in general to
> include intl, or let users install it if they want it?  I had the

In my experience, not including intl/ is a clear win, these days.

> impression it was better to include it, but maybe these days it's better
> to leave it out.  Certainly I'm happy to make distributions smaller :).
>
>     autoreconf --verbose --install --force || exit

That's worth revisiting.

> This will overwrite a newer texinfo.tex/config.guess/etc. (from gnulib)
> with an older one.  Until the serial number stuff is there, my
> understanding is that autoreconf and gnulib don't get along.
>
>     Use something like this derivation of bison's bootstrap script:
>
> Yikes, this seems unbelievably complex!  Renaming and removing files,

Sorry about that.  It's technically more than necessary, but does have
nice features -- like getting the latest .po files from the web.
The parts that are bison-specific are effectively if'd out.  I thought
it'd be better to have a general, more-likely-to-be-reused tool than
to fork a minimal script just for GNU hello.

> running cvs ... these don't seem like things a bootstrap script should
> do.

I think of it as a `developer's-bootstrap-from-cvs' sort of script,
not a bootstrap-build-without-using-configure sort of script.
Maybe we need a better name for one of them.

> Well, anyway, thanks for sending it, I will study.  It definitely
> helps in understanding gnulib.