Re: maint.mk v. gzip 1.2.4

[Simon Josefsson]

Micah Cowan <address@hidden> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>> Sadly, old versions of gzip send the help/usage report to stderr, not
>>> stdout, so ">/dev/null" alone does not discard it.  (And grep wouldn't
>>> see an "rsyncable", even if it were there.)  Folding stderr into stdout
>>> looks harmless to me (not quite a proof of correctness, I realize), and
>>> seems to solve the spewage problem:
>>>
>>>       gzip_rsyncable := \
>>>         $(shell gzip --help 2>&1 |grep rsyncable >/dev/null && echo 
>>> --rsyncable)
>>>
>>>
>>>    For the record, that's on Tru64 V5.1B-4 (Patch Kit 6), but I'd expect
>>> that anyone with a sufficiently obsolete gzip would see it, too.
>> 
>> Fixed in gnulib's maint.mk, thanks!
>
> Thanks. Did you opt for the 2>/dev/null version because it is known that
> no version of gzip old enough to emit --help's output to stderr supports
> rsyncable? Otherwise, I'd agree with Steven that the 2>&1 version would
> be a bit better.

I synchronized the file with coreutils, which is the "upstream" as far
as maintainer-makefile is concerned.

/Simon