Hi Paul,
Paul Eggert wrote:
> + * top/bootstrap-funclib.sh (prepare_GNULIB_SRCDIR):
> + Use GNULIB_REFDIR also when a submodule 'gnulib' is not configured.
> + This greatly speeds up bootstrapping Octave when using
> + ‘./bootstrap --gnulib-refdir=...’.
I see two problems with this patch:
1) In the case that a submodule 'gnulib' is configured, the effect
of --gnulib-refdir is only a speedup, i.e. there is no functional
difference later between the cases with and without --gnulib-refdir.
However, with your patch that does
git clone "$GNULIB_REFDIR" "$gnulib_path"
in the case that a submodule 'gnulib' is not configured, there is
a functional difference: a "git pull" from the subdirectory gnulib/
will *not* pull from savannah directly. It will pull from the
specified refdir. So that, in order to get the latest 'master', the
user would have to first do a 'git pull' in the refdir, and then do
a 'git pull' in the subdirectory gnulib/.
This is problematic because
- This is almost certainly not the intended behaviour.
- This gives two different meanings to the same command-line option
--gnulib-refdir and to the environment variable GNULIB_REFDIR.
(Recall the major hassles that we had when we had two different
meanings for GNULIB_SRCDIR? It was a PITA for years.)
I would therefore suggest a different implementation: one for which
--gnulib-refdir is *only* a speedup, like in the other case.
I tried the --dissociate option, but it has no effect here.
Maybe what we need instead of
git clone "$GNULIB_REFDIR" "$gnulib_path"
is just a plain copy, roughly like this:
mkdir "$gnulib_path"
cp -a "$GNULIB_REFDIR"/.git "$gnulib_path"/.git
(cd "$gnulib_path" && git checkout ...)
2) It needs to be documented in the --help option. So far, GNULIB_REFDIR
is only mentioned for the case that a 'gnulib' submodule is configured
(first paragraph that starts with "Otherwise, if"). It needs to be
mentioned also in the second paragraph that starts with "Otherwise, if".
Bruno
