Re: [PATCH] autogen: work around BSD toolchain snafu

[Eric Blake]

On 12/04/2013 01:01 AM, Roman Bogorodskiy wrote:

>>
>> We found a workaround - fake the use of an intl subdirectory long
>> enough for autopoint to get what it wants from that fallback.  This
>> workaround may eventually move upstream into gnulib's bootstrap;
>> when it does, we can remove the hack from libvirt's autogen.sh.
>>

> 
> It works only when the submodule is not up to date.
> 
> When running autogen.sh again it doesn't reach the 'else' clause
> you create intl/VERSION in, so it just runs autoreconf and
> fails with the same error.

Not what I was hoping to hear (and maybe gives me more incentive to set
up an environment where I can reproduce the failure myself, instead of
debugging remotely).

> 
> Also, I think we cannot do 'rmdir intl' because it's not empty (scripts
> copy over gettext sources there?), so it fails:
> 

Hmm, I thought 'rmdir -p' would be silent for a non-empty directory; but
I just confirmed that it is not.  And that means that autopoint is
installing files into intl on your machine - probably because more than
just the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION probe failed.  Ah, I see - gettext also
uses autom4te to probe for AM_GNU_GETTEXT, and fails to see that we
requested AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) and so tries to install into intl/
instead, which is what we don't want.

So my attempt at a workaround is rather botched.

NACK to this patch (whether in libvirt's wrapper, or in gnulib's
bootstrap), and I think what I will try instead is a patch to bootstrap
that fails loudly if autom4te is broken, encouraging users to install a
working autom4te.  Bummer that gettext hardcodes to the first 'autom4te'
on PATH rather than using an ${AUTOM4TE} env-var; overriding a broken
autom4te thus requires modifying PATH and sticking yet another wrapper
in front of the broken autom4te version.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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