From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Merging bignum to master Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:16 -0700 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <03f39b77-dc7a-5e52-69f1-a78efb3060f0@cs.ucla.edu> References: <877ekwu1mn.fsf@tromey.com> <48742e8c-fffb-7fe0-bb12-2ce3dc171603@cs.ucla.edu> <837ekvlau2.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1534210771 4497 195.159.176.226 (14 Aug 2018 01:39:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2018 01:39:31 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cc: eliz@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 14 03:39:27 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fpOIx-00011C-7u for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 14 Aug 2018 03:39:27 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42052 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fpOL2-00026I-5x for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 21:41:36 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:34618) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fpOKr-00024R-8o for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 21:41:26 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fpOKq-0003Wa-Ed for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 21:41:25 -0400 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:34898) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fpOKm-0003Tw-KO; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 21:41:20 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A5B61606D7; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:18 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10032) with ESMTP id n4LIR7mgZcXb; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:17 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CFE7160662; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:17 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at zimbra.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10026) with ESMTP id ZfZNePZYrqep; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:17 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.9] (unknown [47.154.30.119]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 19A05160661; Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:41:17 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 131.179.128.68 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:228515 Archived-At: Richard Stallman wrote: > > That being said, the distinction between --with-FOO and --enable-FOO has long > > been a confusing area of the GNU coding standards -- as witnessed by the other > > packages you're thinking about. > > Is that because some cases have been handled erroneously? Or is it > because some cases don't really fit into either --with or --enable? In some cases it's erroneous coding. But more often, I think, it's because the two names are both plausible and developers and users are easily confused about which names to use. For example, coreutils ./configure has a --with-gmp option, which causes two things to happen: first, 'expr' and 'factor' link to the GMP library (which is appropriate for --with-FOO) and second, these two programs support the feature of arbitrary-length integers (which is appropriate for --enable-FOO). Strictly speaking, I supose the GNU Coding Standards require Coreutils to have both a --with-gmp option (to control whether the GMP library is used) and an --enable-bignum option (to control whether bignums are supported). But that would be more confusing than what Coreutils has now, which is a single option that controls both things, and which is more natural since the only reason you'd want to link to GMP is to have bignums, and if you want bignums with Coreutils the only way to get them is to link to GMP. > If the latter, I think we need to take the bull by the horns > and work out a good way to handle those cases, rather than forcing them > into one of two slots which they do not fit. I hope that we needn't make the coding standards even more complicated than they already are in this area. When complexity causes confusion, adding more complexity is likely to cause more confusion. I'd be more inclined to go in the direction Tom Tromey suggested, which is to no longer require a sharp distinction between --with-FOO and --enable-FOO since the distinction's confusion is more trouble than it's worth.