Re: An issue with unlocked-io.h and bootstrapping.

[Jim Meyering]

Mats Erik Andersson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have made a strange observation concerning
>
>     lib/unlocked-io.h
>
> which appears when running the bootstrap script
> for GNU Inetutils.
>
> Until very recently, "unlocked-io" was included
> as a dependency in our "bootstrap.conf". Upon my
> complaint, Alfred M. Szmidt remove that entry,
> after which the following issue vanished completely.
> Therefore we suspect there be a bug in GNUlib on
> this matter.
>
> Now, running "bootstrap" on a fresh cheackout of
> GNU Inetutils, and then happily running
>
>    rsync -Ca . ../temp/
>
> one would expect a source tree where configuration and
> compilation works. Right? But alas, it does not.
>
> An empty soft link
>
>     lib/unlocked-io.h
>
> remains, which is pointing at the non-existent
> location
>
>     ../gnulib/unlocked-io.h

Thanks for the report.

There is already code in gnulib's bootstrap script designed to
remove dangling symlinks from m4/ and lib/-style directories:

  # Remove any dangling symlink matching "*.m4" or "*.[ch]" in some
  # gnulib-populated directories.  Such .m4 files would cause aclocal to fail.
  # The following requires GNU find 4.2.3 or newer.  Considering the usual
  # portability constraints of this script, that may seem a very demanding
  # requirement, but it should be ok.  Ignore any failure, which is fine,
  # since this is only a convenience to help developers avoid the relatively
  # unusual case in which a symlinked-to .m4 file is git-removed from gnulib
  # between successive runs of this script.
  find "$m4_base" "$source_base" \
    -depth \( -name '*.m4' -o -name '*.[ch]' \) \
    -type l -xtype l -delete > /dev/null 2>&1

If it's not working for you, perhaps you've changed the definition
of source_base or you're using an inadequate version of find.
Otherwise, please investigate.