Hi, I am not sure what to do about gnulib.
To recap, gnulib provides compile-time shims for "foreign" or out-of-date target systems that allows Guile to program to a single POSIX + GNU API and not worry too much about what the system actually offers. It is never installed; instead it includes the `gnulib-tool` utility to update the in-tree copy of gnulib, for a selected set of modules. So far, so good. However I was unable to update gnulib before the most recent release. The reason is essentially the problem described in this issue: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30051 To wit, running "autoreconf -vif" invokes the "autopoint" tool supplied by installed gettext, which copies over .m4 files from installed gettext, but these files are older than the ones that are already "vendored" in-tree by gnulib. Other parts of gnulib depend on the newer gnulib-supplied macros which were stompled over; autoconf thus fails to run. So, I can't update gnulib right now. Not a great situation. The options, as I understand them: 1. Some projects (e.g. poke) seem to import the whole of gnulib as a git submodule, and then run "gnulib-tool --update" from that submodule as part of their bootstrap. In this way the stompled files are restored. However I do not want git submodules in Guile; they add additional steps for every time you change to a different HEAD, and I know from experience that I can't rely on myself to perform them all, much less any user with a bug report. Do not want. 2. Same as (1), but subtree merge. This is what we do with lightening and what I would like to do with Whippet, if that project works out. But gnulib is big; a checkout is 200 MB of data + 130 MB git repo. ** Note, for (1) and (2), if you wanted to preserve the ability to bootstrap from a tarball, you'd have to include gnulib in the tarball. Of course you could argue that if you are not gnulib-tool --update'ing, are you really bootstrapping? I don't know the answer. *** 3. Fix autopoint to not overwrite newer m4 files with its copies. I don't know? 4. Fix installed gettext to not define gl_ macros ? That would make it so that it won't stomple on a local gnulib copy. I don't know though. 5. Update to whatever version of gnulib is the latest without this change? 6. Something else? Stop using gnulib? I am not a gnulib wizard and would appreciate any thoughts :) Cc'ing Bruno as he is the expert. Really I would like to avoid gnulib-tool --update in Guile's bootstrap and just keep things like it is. Of course I could be being unreasonable. Cheers, Andy
