Re: FYI: bootstrap with tests/generate.awk!

[Akim Demaille]

| On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 11:23:15AM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
| > >>>>> "Gary" == Gary V Vaughan <address@hidden> writes:
| > 
| > Gary> On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 11:27:31AM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
| > >> Is this really needed?  I mean, I made it a tests/Makefile target.
| > 
| > Gary> Good point.  Probably not.
| > 
| > Gary> However... I assume we will be shipping pregenerated tests?  
| > 
| > Correct.  We also ship Bison generated files, but we don't `bootstrap'
| > them usually.
| 
| I would.  Because I want to:
| 
|         $ cvs -z3 co foo
|       $ cd foo
|       $ ./bootstrap
|       
| And have it be in the right state to do:
| 
|       $ ./configure
|       $ make
|       
| etc.

I'm precisely saying that it works, or still doesn't.  Either you have
Bison, then make will work, or you don't, them bootstrap is not an
help anyway.  I don't want bootstrap to become a second Makefile
system.  The maintenance is already often a burdenance.  Let's not
spread it even more.

| > As a matter of fact, I even wonder if we are not willing a mere:
| > 
| > $ cat bootstrap
| > make -f Makefile.am bootstrap
| > 
| > and that's all.
| 
| But that would mean maintaining a bunch of make rules to fire the very
| same list of cammands that can just be listed sequentially in
| bootstrap.  Even though `make -f #Makefile.am' will work for simple
| projects, it is not a general solution (I'd be very surprised if it
| could bootstrap cvs AutoGen for example), so I don't think we should
| teach it...

I'm just militating for the centralization of the information.  I'm
not saying pushing users to make bootstrap is a good thing,
./bootstrap is better.  But the *content*, IMHO, belongs to
Makefile.am.

Yet using targets *is* a good thing in MHO.  You can have
bootstrap-automake, bootstrap-foo etc. which are constant across all
the packages etc.  All that remains to write is

bootstrap: bootstrap-autoconf bootstrap-automake

etc.

In addition you may depend upon dependencies to avoid useless
bootstrap targets.  Not that it matters actually ;)