Hi Paul, Paul Smith wrote: > > ... in practice, it's not > > only developers who build from git repositories. Namely, many people > > whose habits have been shaped by GitHub will look for the git > > repository before looking for a release tarball. > > Well, they are in for some hardship. > > Building GNU Make from Git requires a significant number of tools to be > installed, including automake, autoconf, gettext, texinfo, gnulib, perl > 5 (if tests are run), and probably some other things I've forgotten.
Yep, many GNU (and non-GNU) packages are in the same situation: Special and non-so-special tools are needed in order to build from the git repository. > I do not ever check in any generated files, at all (except, I guess, > the gnulib bootstrap script which is generated by gnulib) That's the common way of doing, since otherwise working with git branches becomes a major hassle. One file, though, should be added under version control: doc/fdl.texi. See https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=blob;f=modules/fdl . Rationale: So that people who check out the git repository _without_ building it still know about the license of doc/*.texi. [0] > What I'd really prefer to do is provide a "nightly source tarball" > somewhere which contains the latest Git code, already configured, for > those who want to try it. But I don't have a simple way to do that > with the current GNU infrastructure AFAIK. It seems like there's > little appetite for deleting content from alpha.gnu.org, or creating > ephemeral content there. Yes, the current GNU infrastructure does not provide this ability. But I have such a "weekly source tarball" infrastructure in place for some GNU packages [1][2][3] on gitlab.com. Other GNU packages do it on sourceware.org [4]. If you want me to set up (and maintain) such a thing for GNU make on gitlab, I can do that. If you want it on sourceware.org, you can contact mjw [5]. Bruno [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/License-Texinfo-sources.html [1] https://gitlab.com/gnu-grep/ci-distcheck [2] https://gitlab.com/gnu-m4/ci-distcheck [3] https://gitlab.com/gnu-gettext/ci-distcheck [4] https://snapshots.sourceware.org/gnupoke/ [5] https://gnu.wildebeest.org/blog/mjw/
