Re: Not distributing README-release automatically.

[Jim Meyering]

On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 8:12 AM, Mathieu Lirzin <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have been using 'readme-release' module and was surprised to discover
> that the "README-release" file was automatically distributed without any
> mention in the "module/readme-release" file.
>
> After some digging I have discovered that all files from the "top"
> directory are automatically added to EXTRA_DIST.  Here is a snippet from
> bootstrap that could be removed:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>       if test -n "$top_files"; then
>         sed_prepend_topdir='s,^,$(top_srcdir)/,'
>         echo "EXTRA_DIST += "`echo "$top_files" | sed -e 
> "$sed_prepend_topdir"`
>         echo
>       fi
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> IMO we should move the responsability of distributing "top/*" files to
> the module definition instead, and not distributing "README-release"
> automatically (like what is done in Coreutils).
>
> What do people think?

Hi Mathieu,
Thanks for helping with automake.

Regarding README-release, I'm leery of requiring each
top-file-specifying module writer to remember to add each such file to
EXTRA_DIST. An alternative, probably-smaller change may be to add some
attribute by which a module with such a file could opt out of that
default.