Re: gnulib and automake

[Shai Ayal]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 6:12 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 26-Oct-2009, Benjamin Lindner wrote:
>
> | John W. Eaton wrote:
> | > Instead of the current ad-hoc way of including portability and
> | > replacement functions (things like mkdir, rmdir, strftime, etc.) in
> | > Octave, I would like to start using functions from gnulib
> | > (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib).  By using gnulib, we should get
> | > improved portability and in some cases better or newer versions of
> | > some of the replacement functions that we are currently using.
> | >
> | > To see what would be required, I started trying to modify Octave's
> | > configure scripts to use gnulib, but quickly found that it is fairly
> | > complex to use gnulib without also using automake.
> | >
> | > I've resisted using automake in the past because it seemed that it
> | > would be a fairly large job to convert Octave's existing build
> | > environment.  But at this point, I'm willing to give it a try just to
> | > get gnulib working.
> | >
> | > Switching to automake and using gnulib may mean some additional
> | > disruption in building Octave during the transition.  Some changes to
> | > the way Octave is built from the Mercurial archive may be needed.  At
> | > the very least, you will need to have some way to get modules from
> | > gnulib if you don't already have them.  But the rules for this should
> | > all be in the configure (or bootstrap/autogen.sh) script, so you
> | > should really only need a network connection, and then only if you
> | > don't already have the necessary modules.
> | >
> | > Are there any strong objections to making this change?
> | >
> | > Is anyone on the list an expert automake user who would be willing to
> | > help with the transition?
> |
> | The topic does not seem to have aroused much interest...
> | Well, I am not an expert on automake and neither on gnulib so I'm not in
> | the position to state objections.
> |
> | I'd like to see the build process still work for windows/mingw platform.
> | Some of octave's dependecy libraries use automake, so this seems to work
> | all right. I have no experience with gnulib and windows, so I can't
> | really judge on that.
>
> I have no intention of breaking the build on Windows systems.
>
> A preliminary changeset for the switch to automake is now available
> here:
>
>  http://jweaton.org/automake.gz
>
I get a 404 No found error for this URL

Shai