Is the autogen directory still needed?

Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

We added the autogen/ directory ~ 2.5 years ago, when we stopped keeping
configure (at top-level) in the repository. I run a daily cron job that
keeps autogen/configure etc updated.

This requires no effort, but I think it has become pointless, basically
just making noise commits.

The main motivations for adding it, as I see it, were:

1) The developers on MS Windows needed to see any updates for
src/config.h (new defines etc) that might need to be copied to
nt/config.nt, and did not want to want have to run autoconf themselves.

2) People who wanted to build Emacs from bzr on POSIX platforms but were
for some reason unable to install (sufficiently recent) autoconf/automake.


Point 1) no longer applies. Bzr Emacs on MS Windows now requires
autotools, and nt/config.nt is no longer being updated.

Point 2) has never been very convincing IMO. It is very easy to install
autotools. The autogen/copy_autogen alternative is not 100% reliable.

The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
it from bzr, and when building from release tarfiles there's no need to
run autotools. If necessary, I could keep just autogen/config.in and
whatever MS-DOS needs (not configure).


I'd keep the part of the cron job that updates loaddefs files (which
does not happen nearly so often), and stop doing the autotools part.

Any opinions?

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Paul Eggert]

Glenn Morris wrote:
> I run a daily cron job that
> keeps autogen/configure etc updated.
> 
> This requires no effort, but I think it has become pointless, basically
> just making noise commits.

I agree.  The noise causes more trouble than it's worth
these days.  I'd remove those automatically-generated files
from bzr.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:12:45 -0400
> 
> 
> The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
> it from bzr

I do.

> If necessary, I could keep just autogen/config.in and whatever
> MS-DOS needs (not configure).

The MS-DOS build needs autogen/config.in and autogen/Makefile.in.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
>> it from bzr
>
> I do.

In all honesty, I _strongly_ suspect you are the only person who does
so, and now you must have autotools installed on MS Windows, so you can
generate config.in etc yourself, rather than us keeping it in the repo
just for you. I'm pretty sure it goes through lengthy periods of not
being buildable on MS-DOS due to addition of new @...@ constructs etc in
the Makefiles, and no-one has ever commented to my knowledge.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

Glenn Morris wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
>>> The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
>>> it from bzr
>>
>> I do.
>
> In all honesty, I _strongly_ suspect you are the only person who does so, 

And I see you agree with me. :)
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-03/msg00662.html

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Bruce Korb]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1592 bytes --]

As far as I know, you are not using autogen at all in any way.  So having
an autogen directory makes no sense whatever.

On Saturday, October 26, 2013, Glenn Morris wrote:

>
> We added the autogen/ directory ~ 2.5 years ago, when we stopped keeping
> configure (at top-level) in the repository. I run a daily cron job that
> keeps autogen/configure etc updated.
>
> This requires no effort, but I think it has become pointless, basically
> just making noise commits.
>
> The main motivations for adding it, as I see it, were:
>
> 1) The developers on MS Windows needed to see any updates for
> src/config.h (new defines etc) that might need to be copied to
> nt/config.nt, and did not want to want have to run autoconf themselves.
>
> 2) People who wanted to build Emacs from bzr on POSIX platforms but were
> for some reason unable to install (sufficiently recent) autoconf/automake.
>
>
> Point 1) no longer applies. Bzr Emacs on MS Windows now requires
> autotools, and nt/config.nt is no longer being updated.
>
> Point 2) has never been very convincing IMO. It is very easy to install
> autotools. The autogen/copy_autogen alternative is not 100% reliable.
>
> The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
> it from bzr, and when building from release tarfiles there's no need to
> run autotools. If necessary, I could keep just autogen/config.in and
> whatever MS-DOS needs (not configure).
>
>
> I'd keep the part of the cron job that updates loaddefs files (which
> does not happen nearly so often), and stop doing the autotools part.
>
> Any opinions?
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1891 bytes --]

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 22:08:16 -0400
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >> The MS-DOS port is not a relevant factor AFAICS, because no-one builds
> >> it from bzr
> >
> > I do.
> 
> In all honesty, I _strongly_ suspect you are the only person who does
> so

Look, you asked for information about those files, and I provided it.
I'm not interested in another "can we do something to make the MS-DOS
port suffer" discussion.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I'm not interested in another "can we do something to make the MS-DOS
> port suffer" discussion.

Neither am I (I never have been).

I'm just saying, that _if_ the only justification we can come up with
for the existence of the autogen/ directory is that one developer needs
a few of the files within it from time-to-time for personal use, then
IMO that's not worth keeping in the repository and updating on a
(potentially) daily basis.

(Does bzr itself even run under MS-DOS, or do you fetch the sources in
some other OS, then transfer them across to a DOS environment? If so, or
even if not, just run autogen.sh in that other OS before you switch to
DOS.)

But maybe someone else will come up with a good reason why autogen/
should continue to exist, in which case the above is irrelevant.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 17:26:27 -0400
> 
> I'm just saying, that _if_ the only justification we can come up with
> for the existence of the autogen/ directory is that one developer needs
> a few of the files within it from time-to-time for personal use, then
> IMO that's not worth keeping in the repository and updating on a
> (potentially) daily basis.

I didn't express any objections to deleting those files from the
repository, did I?

> Does bzr itself even run under MS-DOS, or do you fetch the sources in
> some other OS, then transfer them across to a DOS environment?

I run my DOS development environment on Windows.  The build happens in
a local bzr branch whose parent is the trunk branch that is bound to
savannah.

> But maybe someone else will come up with a good reason why autogen/
> should continue to exist, in which case the above is irrelevant.

Which is why I provided the information about the files that the DOS
build uses.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Stefan Monnier]

> I didn't express any objections to deleting those files from the
> repository, did I?

[ Let's try and stay constructive rather than defensive, please. ]

So, IIUC, what you said is that the MS-DOS build uses those 2 files.
So, if there's some other reason to keep some of those files, then those
2 would be handy, but otherwise removing them would not be
a significant problem.


        Stefan

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

I've removed all the autogen/ stuff, apart from the two files you said
msdos used, which I moved to msdos/autogen for the sake of clarity. I
don't plan to update these (personally I hope they don't stay in the
VCS). If you want to update them, use something like
"./admin/update_autogen -A".

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Glenn Morris]

Glenn Morris wrote:

> If you want to update them, use something like "./admin/update_autogen -A".

Sorry, I meant to say "-A msdos/autogen".

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 03:00:08 -0500
> 
> 
> I've removed all the autogen/ stuff, apart from the two files you said
> msdos used, which I moved to msdos/autogen for the sake of clarity. I
> don't plan to update these (personally I hope they don't stay in the
> VCS). If you want to update them, use something like
> "./admin/update_autogen -A".

Thank you.

Re: Is the autogen directory still needed?

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> I've removed all the autogen/ stuff, apart from the two files you said
> msdos used, which I moved to msdos/autogen for the sake of clarity. I
> don't plan to update these (personally I hope they don't stay in the
> VCS).

Thank you.  BTW should we add autogen/ to authors-ignored-files or
authors-valid-file-names?

-- 
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/