Re: installable gnulib library

[Bruce Korb]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
> I have an (undoubtedly caffeine induced) idea... why not enhance gnulib to
> provide a shim that sits between the system libraries and client code that
> wants to use it without shipping (another copy) of the particular parts it
> depends upon?
>
> If we add a compile-and-install-everything-as-a-library mode to gnulib, many
> GNU packages could stop distributing the MiBs of autotools' generated glue,
> and instead go with a much lighter build system that simply depends on
> gnulib API semantics, and requires that gnulib be installed.  For many
> modern systems, the installed gnulib might turn out to be vanishingly
> small... and for many old and broken systems, having just one copy of gnulib
> in shared memory ought to provide a nice improvement to speed and memory
> utilisation.
>
> Please tell me I'm crazy right now.  Or at least before I waste the next few
> months of my free time figuring out how to do it.

Hey Gary,

Long ago, far away and years ago, that is *precisely* the point I was making.
(Remember the autotool bake-off contest?)  My thinking then (and now) is that
you just make your project depend upon the pre-installation of this common
glue package.  Glue layer not installed?  Then your's won't install either.
I think some folks won't buy into it because they don't want another dependency
for their projects.  (I think that was the main objection to my
proposal for that
long-ago "contest".  Can't seem to put together the right Google search to
dredge it up again...)

Anyway, at least _I'd_ like to see it.  :-D

Cheers - Bruce