Re: [PATCH] maint: update tests/init.sh from gnulib

[Jim Meyering]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 4:38 PM Bernhard Voelker
<mail@bernhard-voelker.de> wrote:
>
> On 12/22/21 18:15, Jim Meyering wrote:
> > Thanks. Please push.
>
> Thanks for the review, done:
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=1435e8e5c5
>
> > I like the idea of adding a syntax-check rule for that, too. Long overdue.
> > However, what do you think about making it work also for projects like sed
> > for which init.sh is in a differently-named subdir (there, it's 
> > "testsuite/")?
> > Then, we could consider moving it to maint.mk.
>
> 'gnulib/tests/init.sh' is just one file, and I think each package has a 
> different
> set of files physically copied from gnulib, e.g.:
>
> * coreutils:
>   + gnulib/doc/COPYINGv3       -> COPYING
>   + gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap -> bootstrap
>   + gnulib/tests/init.sh       -> tests/init.sh
>
> * findutils:
>   + gnulib/doc/COPYINGv3       -> COPYING
>   + gnulib/doc/fdl.texi        -> doc/fdl.texi
>   + gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap -> bootstrap
>   + gnulib/tests/init.sh       -> tests/init.sh
>
> Hmm, that reminds me that 'fdl.texi' seems to be outdated in coreutils ... 
> which is
> also a physical copy since aefd434e56c6 (May 2020), but Paul updated the file 
> in gnulib
> in Aug 2020 (gnulib commit b5d9bcdf0348).
>
> Hence the list of files to copy for coreutils would be the same as that for 
> findutils.

Good point. That suggests that there should be a list of file names,
e.g. including fdl.texi.
Then the code would prune that list, removing files that are not VC'd
(and hence don't need to be updated).

> Another approach is to provide a make target 'update-gnulib-to-latest' via 
> gnulib's top/maint.mk
> which I proposed a while ago; each package could then specify in a make 
> target which files have
> to be copied.  See the 2 attachments in:
>   https://lists.gnu.org/r/coreutils/2018-12/msg00007.html

Sorry that's been languishing for so long.

IMHO, we need both a syntax-check rule AND a turn-key "update if
anything's out of date" rule
that both copies any updated files into place and creates a proper
commit for them.