Re: gnulib-tool feature request

[Sam Steingold]

On 2/27/10, Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> wrote:
>  >>  > Since I use gnulib in several sub-modules, I need to avoid conflicts
>  >>  > between different gnulib imports.
>  >>  > thus I need to make all those _GL_* constants module-specific.
>  >>  > thus I need gnulib-tool to accept a --macro-prefix option and this 
> patch:
>  >>
>  >> I believe the recommended way to avoid conflicts between different
>  >>  gnulib imports is to use a separate configure.ac for each gnulib import,
>  >
>  > of course I have a separate configure.in for each module!
>  > the setup works just fine, I just don't want to have to apply the
>  > patch to gnulib-too myself each time I pull from gnulib.
>
> Then I don't understand what purpose the patch serves?  Each
>  configure.in instance should have its own namespace?

The sub-modules have to share the gnulib directories
(so that they do not include several identical object files)
which results in header conflict: each gllib directory contains
its own (e.g.) unistd.h which is adapted to the specific submodule.
therefore if all these headers use the same _GL_UNISTD_H macros,
the wrong gllib header is used, the wrong functions are declared,
the wrong system headers are included and nothing works.

This has been discussed on this list in the thread
"uname: build problem on win32" in August 2009.
See
http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg14805.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg14807.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg14808.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg14814.html

At that time, Bruno said that "for now, this change is better limited
to your project."
I think that now, after several months of testing in clisp,
the time is ripe to include the change in gnulib.



-- 
Sam Steingold <http://sds.podval.org>