I implemented the tarcache idea: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/libidn.git/commit/?id=9ae53e866a6fafa56db26d184ccae9c39dae7446
It is opt-in for any developer, instead of normal ./bootstrap you do: env GNULIB_BOOTSTRAP_CACHE=/home/jas/.local/gnulib-bootstrap-cache ./bootstrap ... The first run is normal, and takes 50 seconds, and the epilogue function then saves a copy of all generated files. Now witness a second round: jas@latte:~/src/libidn$ time env GNULIB_BOOTSTRAP_CACHE=/home/jas/.local/gnulib-bootstrap-cache ./bootstrap Discovered bootstrap cache /home/jas/.local/gnulib-bootstrap-cache/bootstrap-files-for-libidn.tar.gz, using it... real 0m1,386s user 0m1,238s sys 0m0,217s jas@latte:~/src/libidn$ Oh bliss! I have put GNULIB_BOOTSTRAP_CACHE in my default environment. I can remove the tarcache to have it automatically re-generated if I change anything in the bootstrapping environment. If things work, this will speed up my daily work pattern significantly! Let's see if I notice any problems... maybe my thinking is fundamentally flawed. It is easy integrate to add this to CI/CD environments: generate the bootstrap cache once, and pass it on as an artifact to all other jobs that build from git. Sometimes you do want to excercise multiple bootstrapping paths, but not always. Come to think of it, this paves the road for making public releases of projects into two files, instead of having: libidn-1.37.tar.gz You could publish libidn-1.37-src.tar.gz - tarball of all files in git libidn-1.37-bootstrap.tar.gz - tarball generated above Hmm. But then you won't have the 'make dist' files. So maybe it should be another tarball containing those output files: libidn-1.37-dist.tar.gz - additional files generated by 'make dist' The traditional libidn-1.37.tar.gz contains those files anyway so maybe the last one is not useful. I'm not sure even the libidn-1.37-bootstrap.tar.gz file is of any use. Perhaps having a libidn-1.37-src.tar.gz tarball separate from git history is not useful anymore, so maybe we should distribute libidn-1.37-git.tar.gz which could be generated like this: git clone --branch v1.37 j...@git.sv.gnu.org:/srv/git/libidn.git libidn-1.37-git tar cfz libidn-1.37-git.tar.gz libidn-1.37-git This enable the user to have access to the entire project history using normal git commands. I think the idea behind ChangeLog was to give users some of this ability in the days when version controlled source repositories wasn't that common. Still, maybe my last thoughts about tarballs is a solution in search of a problem... the initial problem was ./bootstrap inefficiency, and that may be mitigated by the caching approach now. /Simon
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
