Re: Automake 1.4l released

[Charles Wilson]

Tom Tromey wrote:

> > > > > > "Charles" == Charles Wilson <address@hidden> writes:
>
> Charles> Nope.  It actually seems to be due to a change in automake.
> Charles> Apparently, make distcheck did not previously 'chmod -R a-w'.
>
> I looked a bit but due to massive reorganization it is a pain to find
> out when this went in.
>
>
> We rely on `cp -p' in a few places, all in `dist'.  The problem is
> most obvious in `distcheck' because it makes the tree read-only when
> it is unpacked.  But suppose you use something like CVSREAD and check
> out a tree.  Then a file like configure could very well be read-only,
> leading to the same problem for a simple `dist'.
>
> I think we could add a check for whether "cp -p works in ." to
> AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE and then use the result everywhere.  For this to work
> we'd also need to add code to `missing' to handle this case, I think
> (code I'm not entirely sure how to write -- ideally it would restore
> the original file's permissions once it was done with the copy).
>
> I think our goal should be to support this feature everywhere.  But if
> there aren't maintainers who need this in 1.5, I would prefer to file
> a PR and leave it until a later release.  If you are such a
> maintainer, please speak up.  Charles, are you?


No, I am not.  None of my (very small) original source contributions are 
autotool'ed <hangs head in shame>.  My interest is in making it easier 
to get a working, autotool/libtool system for building DLL's on cygwin 
"transparently" -- e.g. just like so's on unix.  Then, I can more easily 
port stuff to cygwin; I'm not *really* that concerned about originating 
software on cygwin (although that may be important to other people).

Since robert collin's hacked version of libtool which meets this goal 
requires:

auto-import changes in binutils
  --> completed (a few pending problems, but mostly there)
up-to-date autoconf
  --> 2.52 package for cygwin was released a few weeks ago
automake-1.4i or later
  --> so I've been tracking recent automake development. Hopefully, 
when automake-1.5 is released (and verified to work acceptably on 
cygwin), an official cygwin package will be released soon thereafter.

Therefore I've been meddling (read: I've been a major PITA :-) in the 

developers' mailing lists for those projects recently.


--Chuck