Re: [PATCH] mc CVS port to glib 2.0

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello, Ali!

> please allow me to point out some advantages of using glib 2.0 in hope i
> can get some positive feedback for this idea. you know that many people
> are using gnome 2.0 nowadays and they would like to see a glib 2.0
> supporting mc that can be easily compiled on their system e.g. some of
> them like me prefer compiling stuff from CVS.

I'm all for using the latest software, but there are several reasons why
glib 2 is not used:

1) I don't know how to support both 1.2 and 2.0, so glib-1.2 support will 
have to be be dropped.

2) glib 2.0 requires pkgconfig, which needs to be compiled.  It's one more 
hurdle for those who have no glib at all.

3) We are in the prerelease stage, it's late to do such radical steps, 
unless there are very serious reasons.

4) Nobody have actually done anything (so far) to support glib-2.0.

5) As far as I know, glib 1.2 and 2.0 can be installed on the same system 
without problems.

> right now as is, mc requires that these people still install glib 1.x
> besides their glib 2.x system. this is for sure no big deal but the
> problems are starting with gettext. as you know many gnome 2.0 and gtk
> 2.0 related material can't be compiled using gettext below 0.11.x
> anymore. this causes a lot of problems for them. now the problem for us
> is that we need to tweak gettext 0.10.x on our system so we can get the
> gettext stuff compiled.

I think that we can upgrade gettext, but again, somebody should actually 
do it.  That being said, I have gettext 0.11.1 in /usr (from RedHat), and 
gettext 0.10.40 in /usr/local (locally installed), and it works for me.

> that is removing gettext 0.11.x and installing gettext 0.10.x and then
> after it is configured we removed the old gettext again and install the
> new one.

You are describing a serious problem in passing, as if everybody knows it 
and does exactly what you do.

> the advantage of using glib 2.x is it makes the requirement of using
> AM_GNU_GETTEXT obsolete you can replace it by using AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT
> and use the functions provided by glib 2.0 for the future it is easier
> having a unified system that works with all kind of gettext versions.

I'm now reading glib-gettext.m4 from the CVS head version of glib and
cannot find what you are describing.  Could you tell me the line numbers 
in that file where the "unified system" is implemented?

> right now you need to deal with older and newer gettext, need to have a
> lot of checks in the autogen.sh file and probably some workarounds etc.

Only versions 0.10.38 - 0.10.40 are supported.  The code for 0.11.x is
incomplete, and in fact wrong.  gettextize is not supposed to be used in
scripts.  autopoint is what should be used.  autopoint appeared in 0.11.3.

> i personally don't know how the maintainer likes to see the future of
> mc. i probably think he/she likes to have it independant of other stuff
> as much as possible so the idea comes close to embedd the glib library
> into mc's sourcecode. but please if you do so, then it may be more
> interesting to get glib 2.0 into it since it supports all these nice
> gettext stuff. this makes maintaining of mc much easier because you
> don't need to deal with gettext anymore.

Upgrading to everything new would be easier if it would not break anything 
else.

> please allow me to show you this patch that i wrote today. it still
> causes some minor issues during the compile time with some 'getopt'
> thingies that i haven't figured out yet. but i hope that someone could
> help me or explain me what this was meant to be so i can solve the last
> minor issue.

Have you tried "make disctcheck" with it?

Why did you comment out AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR?  If it doesn't work, then I'll
rather wait until it's fixed.

Why did you add libtool?  Midnight Commander is not a library.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin