Collin Funk <collin.fu...@gmail.com> writes: > Hi Simon and Gulliem, > > On 5/8/24 1:06 PM, Simon Josefsson via Bug reports for the GNU Internet > utilities wrote: >> Hi Guillem. I added the bootstrap files to the tarball now. >> >> I'm not convinced that this is a good idea, so let's consider this an >> experiment. First, this is not recommended by gnulib documentation. >> Several GNU projects (like coreutils) ship the scripts, and it is good >> license compliance hygiene to include all source code, so maybe that is >> a gnulib documentation problem -- but I suspect the reason for this lack >> of recommendation are due to the second and third issues. > > I agree with the points that you bring up. But I noticed a Debian > developer decided to do the same with groff after the xz-utils fiasco > [1]. So maybe it is worth experimenting with. > > Hopefully reading the documentation included in the tarball should > clear up the build process for people installing it that way. > > [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2024-03/msg00211.html
Yes we need to experiment in this area. But I don't think it is possible to write documentation explaining how to re-bootstrap from a tarball. The tools involved simply doesn't do what I perceive people expect them to do. Changing the tools is one possibility, but the current behaviour is documented [1] and I don't think this will change in the near future. Documenting for each project how to erase all local generated files is fragile and boring work. I think this is a doomed approach for many reasons. We can consider publishing PGP signed 'git archive'-style tarballs instead. This gives other advantages. Most users are better of using the curated prepared tarballs, but I acknowledge that distributors have other needs (and are somewhat prepared to own the problems resulting from that) and we should try to support this too. /Simon [1] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2024-04/msg00052.html
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