Re: problems with node Utilities in Makefiles

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Stepan, all,

* Stepan Kasal wrote on Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 04:02:19PM CEST:
> 
> I noticed many inconsistencies between the standards and their most
> prominent implementation, Autoconf + Automake:

Yep.  I keep forgetting, awk should be listed.

FWIW, Autoconf promises to be able to make do with dead-ancient Solaris
awk, just in case someone doubts that modern awk is not portable enough.

> 2) "make dist" in Automake-generated makefiles depends on "find and
> chmod" to remove the distdir.

find and chmod are listed in GCS, `Install Command Categories'.

> 3) If you use the Automake option dist-bzip2, then "make dist" uses
> bzip2, not gzip.  Likevise for Automake options dist-zip, dist-tarZ.
> If there options are _meant_ to breach GCS, like, e.g. the "foreign"
> option, the Automake manual shall note this.

I suppose this doesn't have any impact on GCS, no?  I don't think zip
should be added to GCS.  A patch to Automake seems more appropriate
IMVHO.

> 4) Is it still adequate to say about "mkdir -p" that
>       most systems don't support it.
> What about
>       some systems don't support it.
> ?

What's the difference wrt. GCS?  Except for GNU Coreutils and relatively
recent BSD implementations, one still has to think about concurrency
issues and what happens together with -m, or existing symlinks, see the
Autoconf manual.  But going into detail here seems like the wrong thing
to do, too.  Anyway, I don't have a strong opinion here (kind of a bike
shed color issue).

> IMVHO all these issues should be resolved by changing the standard.
> If you agree with that, I can prepare a patch.

FWIW, I'm not a person to agree here or not, but I suppose you could
prepare a patch to avoid needing two separate agreements (one on the
idea and one on the patch  ;-)

Cheers, and yes, this is all very much IMHO,
Ralf