Re: gl_CONDITIONAL & AM_CONDITIONAL

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Bruce,

> Once you've got autogen installed

Oh, I need autogen installed first! Taking the latest tarball from
ftp.gnu.org. Configuring it:

checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
configure: checking for guile 2.2
configure: checking for guile 2.0
configure: checking for guile 1.8
configure: error: 
No Guile development packages were found.

Glad that I have guile-2.0.2 installed. Using that...

config.status: error: in `/media/develdata/devel/build/autogen-5.18.16':
config.status: error: Something went wrong bootstrapping makefile fragments
    for automatic dependency tracking.  Try re-running configure with the
    '--disable-dependency-tracking' option to at least be able to build
    the package (albeit without support for automatic dependency tracking).
See `config.log' for more details

Doing that. Then "make" fails, with output that ends like this:

In file included from ag.c:23:
expGuile.c: In function 'ag_scm_type_e':
expGuile.c:72:9: warning: implicit declaration of function 'AG_SCM_IS_PROC' 
[-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
   72 |     if (AG_SCM_IS_PROC( typ)) return GH_TYPE_PROCEDURE;
      |         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
expGuile.c:75:9: warning: implicit declaration of function 'AG_SCM_PAIR_P'; did 
you mean 'AG_SCM_CHAR_P'? [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
   75 |     if (AG_SCM_PAIR_P(  typ)) return GH_TYPE_PAIR;
      |         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
      |         AG_SCM_CHAR_P
expGuile.c:77:9: warning: implicit declaration of function 'AG_SCM_LIST_P'; did 
you mean 'SCM_LIST_H'? [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
   77 |     if (AG_SCM_LIST_P(  typ)) return GH_TYPE_LIST;
      |         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
      |         SCM_LIST_H
expGuile.c: In function 'ag_scm_max':
expGuile.c:168:19: warning: implicit declaration of function 'AG_SCM_TO_LONG' 
[-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
  168 |             val = AG_SCM_TO_LONG(car);
      |                   ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
make[3]: *** [Makefile:654: autogen-ag.o] Error 1

Abandoning this route.

>      bash -x config/bootstrap

I see it fail in autotool-out.txt.

autoopts/Makefile.am:128: error: GL_GENERATE_ALLOCA_H does not appear in 
AM_CONDITIONAL
autoopts/Makefile.am:140: error: GL_COND_OBJ_DUP2 does not appear in 
AM_CONDITIONAL
...

The complaints are about autoopts/Makefile.am, which contains pieces of
Gnulib code, cribbed out of the Gnulib repository without handling dependencies
and .m4 files. It does not even invoke gnulib-tool!

The fix will be the following:
 1. Forget about the internal details of Gnulib, as you knew them from 7 years
    ago. *The internal details have changed.*
 2. Remove from autoopts/bootstrap.dir:add_files_to_mf() everything that is
    related to Gnulib.
 3. Read the Gnulib documentation
    https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/index.html
    in particular, sections 1.1, 2.5, 2.9, and chapter 3 upto section 3.8.

Bruno