Hi Basil,
> > I arrived at the attached patches in an initial attempt to loosen some
> > of these requirements, and make them more internally consistent.
The patches look reasonable to me, in the sense that the existing support
of the NEWS file appears to continue to work.
> > Before pursuing this further, I was hoping to get some feedback on
> > whether changes in this direction are welcome
Yeah, sure. Apparently you are a release manager of a package with a
different style of NEWS file. There's no reason why we shouldn't
accommodate a different style, especially since you say that Automake
supports it.
I have applied patches 1, 3, 4 in your name, adjusting the first line
of the git commit message to match the first line of the ChangeLog entry.
For patch 2, I would suggest three tweaks of how long commands are broken
across lines:
1)
+test -n "$stub_line" || die "one of line(s) $stub_range of $news" \
+ "must be exactly '$noteworthy_stub'"
Write this as:
+test -n "$stub_line" \
+ || die "one of line(s) $stub_range of $news must be exactly
'$noteworthy_stub'"
2)
+ perl -MPOSIX -pi \
+ -e 'if ($. == $ENV{gl_line}) {' \
+ -e ' my $today = strftime "%F", localtime time;' \
+ -e ' s/\Q$ENV{gl_ver_stub}/$ENV{gl_ver}/;' \
+ -e ' s/\Q$ENV{gl_date_stub}/($today)/;' \
+ -e ' s/\Q$ENV{gl_type_stub}/[$ENV{gl_type}]/;' \
+ -e '}' \
Better add 5 spaces before each '-e', for a useful indentation.
3)
+ $news || die 'failed to update NEWS'
Write this as:
+ $news \
+ || die 'failed to update NEWS'
Also, since the total size of your contributions is becoming relevant
for copyright purposes, I'd like to ask whether you can exchange copyright
assignment papers with the FSF regarding GNULIB, like you already did for
EMACS ? Thanks!
Bruno
