Re: issues with git submodules and `bootstrap'

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Simon,

On 11 Jan 2012, at 20:57, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> [[...]] for some reason, my projects
> often follow a pattern where they need to have multiple gnulib
> instances.  Last time I looked, bootstrap couldn't handle this, can
> yours?

Yes it can.

Actually another part of the (many) reason(s) I rewrote the thing
from scratch is that I needed two sets of gnulib files in the
master branch of GNU M4 - one set for libm4.la for the module api
runtime, and things like gnu-getopt and version-etc (IIRC) in the
main M4 binary.  I think this setup is a fairly common requirement
for any project that installs libraries and a binary or two, so I
was rather surprised at how difficult it was to tease that functionality
out of the gnulib bootstrap.

I haven't yet updated the M4 bootstrap script to use my rewrite (it
still uses the bespoke script the Eric and I wrote), so I can't point
you at a direct example, but the extension mechanism is very straight
forward and easy to understand from the copious comments; and I have
posted bootstrap.conf updates to adopt my rewrite into several projects
here on the list and to my github account to show how straight forward
extending it is: a simple matter of writing a hook function or two.

If you decide to go ahead and try my bootstrap script, and get stuck
anywhere, I'd be happy to help write the bootstrap.conf parts for you
since I can also use them to move M4 master to my saner script.

If you decide to go ahead and try my bootstrap script, and finish the
multi-gnulib instance hook function without any help, please ping
me afterwards if you don't mind me adopting it for M4 too :)

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)