Re: [bug-inetutils] gnulib

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> wrote:

> Any thoughts on this?  Does anyone object to removing gnulib if it is
> easy to regenerate it all running a script like autogen.sh?

Both tar and cpio traditionally do this way, providing a special
`bootstrap' script that gets all the gnulib stuff from cvs prior to
running autoconf. This has been the source of various problems
for me as the maintainer, and much more for the users who wished to
build CVS versions. The gnulib stuff changes very quickly, which
requires constant fiddling with the bootstrap script to keep it up
to date. Moreover, sometimes the interfaces provided by the library
change in subtle way, introducing unwanted behaviors or bugs (e.g.
a function that used to return pointer to the statical storage begins
returning a pointer to the allocated memory, causing memory leaks).

On the other hand, in Mailutils we keep gnulib stuff in the repository,
updating it from time to time when the need arises. In my opinion, it
has proven to be a better approach.

Regards,
Sergey