Re: TODO additions

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu> writes:

> Whether we'll
> ever be able to remove src/{s,m} is not relevant I think (it would be
> good but is not a prerequisite to using autoconf/automake).

The most important thing is to avoid the cpp preprocessing of .in
files (which relies on there even being a cpp with the right
behaviour).  However, the current {s,m} system is a mess and it
definitely contributes to the maintenance nightmare.

A case in point is finding out how and why something is happening on
an Irix 6 system.  There's a horrible stack of s files involved,
conflated with a non-orthogonal m file, processed in a way that's very
hard to follow and debug.

> I understand the legal issues,

I don't...

> but I still think that there has to be some way (either technical or
> legal) to allow dynamic loading without endangering the overarching
> goal of the FSF.

Indeed.

> I (and I guess Dave as well) can't try to solve the problem on the
> legal side, but we can try to address it technically.

Actually, I tried to address the legal issue with the technical
approach of allowing either static or dynamic linking of identical
module source.  I thought that would make copyright issues clear as
well as being clean from a programming point of view.