Re: adding bootstrap and bootstrap.conf

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Variants of this bootstrap script are being used in at least 6 or
>> 7 different projects, and having it here seems like the best way
>> to keep everyone up to date.  However there's plenty of room for
>> improvement.
>
> Well, I'd suggest two improvements:

Thanks for the feedback.

> First, the name. "Bootstrapping" means, according to Wikipedia [1][2],
> a "solution to a chicken-and-egg problem". There is no such chicken-and-egg
> problem here. A 'bootstrap' script makes sense for GNU bash or GNU sed, which

My impression is that few (if any) of the autogen scripts use
gnulib, and I'd like the name of this script to distinguish it.
Besides, there's another definition (the first one when I type "dict bootstrap")
that is more evocative: to load and initialize the operating system on
a computer.  Normally abbreviated to "{boot}".

> cannot assume that the user has sufficient tools for running a 'configure'
> script. Or for GNU bison which needs a parser generated by itself to parse
> its input files. But here? The tasks are to copy some files and generate
> some others through the auto* tools.
>
> GNOME and some other GNU projects use the name 'autogen.sh' for scripts with
> this purpose. It's a well-known and self-explaining name. I'd suggest to
> rename 'bootstrap' to 'autogen.sh'.
>
> Second, the script applies gnulib-tool on a scratch subdirectory. This is
> worrisome: it indicates that gnulib-tool does some things the wrong way.
> Can you or Paul explain what is missing in gnulib-tool's working?

I wouldn't say it's wrong, just not the way I wanted it.
With coreutils, one motivation was that I (and Paul, too, I presume) want
all gnulib-imported files to end up in e.g., lib/ and m4/ directories,
alongside any version-controlled files that may already be there.