Re: Fw: UPDATED (glib-gettextize patch)

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 04:15:29PM -0800, Miles Lane wrote:
> Darin and Havoc have questioned a couple of things that are 
> specified in the Porting Guide.  Specifically, both Darin and
> Havoc would prefer that the changes that require a new autoconf
> version not be made.

I think requiring autoconf 2.5 is a reasonable requirement. I really
only have a couple of reasons:

(1) There are a couple of new features added between autconf 2.13 and
2.5 that will make our life easier as GNOME gets ported to more
platforms. For example, it is now possible to check that headers "play
nicely" with other headers more easily, rather than just checking they
exist. This sort of thing is _possible_ with the earlier versions, but a
bit fiddly. Have a look at autoconf-2.52/NEWS for the other changes (in
particular the changes from 2.13 -> 2.50). Some of those look like
things we want to be using for portability.

(2) The people affected are only those who are building from CVS. You
don't need autotools to build from distributed tarballs. So we are
already permitted to assume an educated audience who know what they are
doing. Upgrading should be straightforward for those people (after all,
there are even CVS scripts that will get the right version and sandbox
it for you). In other words, don't buy the "distributions aren't
shipping it argument" as significant in this case (although usually
that's a winner).

> Darin has also asked why AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED is necessary in
> the glib-gettextize group of changes.

A bit of testing and reading sources/docs makes me think that AC_DEFINE
is possibly sufficient, too. Jacob suggested this construct to me, so
hopefully he can clear up why it's needed.

In general, though, I thought we had already had this discussion back
in about May and decided that autoconf-2.5x and automake-1.4x were
appropriate (in the context of GNOME 2), but not automake-1.5. At some
point it would be nice if we just decided to live with earlier
decisions.

I also think that applying the various suggestions from the porting
guide to platform libraries is a bit fraught with danger. Those
guidelines are for people porting their own applications, which
generally have much less fiddly requirements than a library. It is
clearly stated at a couple of points that the suggestions there are not
for everybody and it is reasonable to assume that maintainers of
bonobo*, libgnome*, etc, know what they are doing and will do the Right
(and Better) Thing anyway.

Malcolm

-- 
I intend to live forever - so far so good.