Re: Gnulib & bootstrap updates

[Simon Josefsson]

Collin Funk <collin.funk1@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Simon and Gulliem,
>
> On 5/8/24 1:06 PM, Simon Josefsson via Bug reports for the GNU Internet 
> utilities wrote:
>> Hi Guillem.  I added the bootstrap files to the tarball now.
>> 
>> I'm not convinced that this is a good idea, so let's consider this an
>> experiment.  First, this is not recommended by gnulib documentation.
>> Several GNU projects (like coreutils) ship the scripts, and it is good
>> license compliance hygiene to include all source code, so maybe that is
>> a gnulib documentation problem -- but I suspect the reason for this lack
>> of recommendation are due to the second and third issues.
>
> I agree with the points that you bring up. But I noticed a Debian
> developer decided to do the same with groff after the xz-utils fiasco
> [1]. So maybe it is worth experimenting with.
>
> Hopefully reading the documentation included in the tarball should
> clear up the build process for people installing it that way.
>
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2024-03/msg00211.html

Yes we need to experiment in this area.  But I don't think it is
possible to write documentation explaining how to re-bootstrap from a
tarball.  The tools involved simply doesn't do what I perceive people
expect them to do.  Changing the tools is one possibility, but the
current behaviour is documented [1] and I don't think this will change
in the near future.  Documenting for each project how to erase all local
generated files is fragile and boring work.  I think this is a doomed
approach for many reasons.  We can consider publishing PGP signed 'git
archive'-style tarballs instead.  This gives other advantages.  Most
users are better of using the curated prepared tarballs, but I
acknowledge that distributors have other needs (and are somewhat
prepared to own the problems resulting from that) and we should try to
support this too.

/Simon

[1] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2024-04/msg00052.html

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