Re: gnumakefile: usable on its own without maintainer-makefile?

[Jim Meyering]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>> Building the 'gnumakefile' module fails:
>>>
>>> http://autobuild.josefsson.org/gnulib-mega/log-201206201113065857000.txt
>>>
>>> Looking at that module, I wonder if that module is useful at all without
>>> maintainer-makefile?  It seems GNUmakefile is tightly coupled together
>>> with maint.mk.  Should GNUmakefile be moved into the maintainer-makefile
>>> module, and the gnumakefile module be removed?
>>
>> Hi Simon,
>>
>> Thanks for noticing.  That sounds like a good plan.
>> Do you feel like doing that and deprecating the gnumakefile module?
>
> Here is a patch to implement that.  I haven't pushed it.  What do you
> think, should this or Eric's approach go in?  I don't care strongly,
> assuming Eric's patch solves my problem.  If we keep two modules, some
> documentation on what is appropriate to put in GNUmakefile and what to
> put in maint.mk would be useful.  That line isn't clear to me now.

Hi Simon,

I prefer your simplification/consolidation.
Currently, no one can use GNUmakefile without also using the
maintainer-makefile module.  Initially, I deliberately made the
inclusion of maint.mk a hard requirement to ensure that I never forgot
that module/file.  Merging the modules seems even better.  maint.mk feels
like such an integral part of the process, and decreasing the number of
build-related modules makes the whole easier to use/understand.

Eric, (or anyone else)
do you know of a project that would benefit from
being able to omit maint.mk?  Or someone who would
simply prefer to use GNUmakefile without maint.mk?

About your patch, Simon,
It removes the gnumakefile module outright.
What do you think about first making it a no-op and deprecating it?
Then, those who want to update to the latest gnulib for some other
change aren't forced immediately to remove their explicit
reference to the deleted "gnumakefile" module?

Obviously, removing a line from bootstrap.conf (or wherever
you store the list of module names) is not hard, so maybe it's
not worth the complexity of delaying the module deletion.
I could go either way.

>>From 5406a811e1fa842b3b1dc75994e8e30aa4f63601 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Simon Josefsson <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 05:08:14 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH] gnumakefile: Remove module. Use maintainer-makefile instead.
>
> * NEWS: Doc fix.
> * modules/maintainer-makefile: Added information from the
> gnumakefile module.
> * modules/gnumakefile: Removed.
> * gnulib-tool: Remove exception for gnumakefile module.
> * MODULES.html.sh: Removed gnumakefile.