[bug-inetutils] Re: gnulib

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Gnulib isn't forward or backwards compatible with itself, so trying
   to build a project using gnulib pretty much requires everyone to
   know which gnulib revisions were used.  There is no infrastructure
   to solve that problem easily today, therefor at least all project
   that I'm familiar with, that uses gnulib, do commit the gnulib
   files into CVS.  This makes sure everyone use the same gnulib code
   that the code was written for.

Well, I was talking with Meyering about this, and parted, and
coreutils don't do keep a checked in copy of gnulib.  Also, from the
looks, bootstrap fetches gnulib from CVS directly (if you want).

The problem that I experienced today was that I had recent auto*
tools, but the gnulib in CVS was old.  We don't keep auto* generated
scripts in CVS, so this just causes problems in keeping a set of
generated tools updated, but not the another set.

I don't see the backward/forward compatibility stuff as a problem, if
you have a working gunlib and auto* that work with the gnulib version
you have, then you won't get any problems.  The problem of
backward/forward compatibility only occurs if you have a outdated
version of auto* or gnulib; and if you update gnulib on your machine,
then I think one can assume that you will update auto* in the same go.

And anyway, this backward/forward compatibility stuff will would
happen right now since we don't know what version of auto* everyone
uses, you might be using 2.59, and I might be using 2.61; but in
either case you'd have a copy of gnulib that works with 2.59, and I'd
have a gnulib copy that works with 2.61.


Cheers!