Re: Why does make run git?

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

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On 08/02/2017 10:26 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> But it is unreliable.  You can't rely on the user's having done 'make'
> in the repository before doing the git operations that use these
> settings.

You can pretty much rely on users running either Make or ./autogen.sh; 
otherwise they can't easily build or run Emacs. So the main problem here 
is ./autogen.sh.

Although last year I arranged for ./autogen.sh (when invoked with no 
arguments) to do Git settings like Make does, some other developers 
objected at the time that this might conflict with their own Git 
settings so I changed autogen.sh to not alter Git settings except on 
explicit request. Given the confusion on this topic on the meantime, 
though, I think the change was mistaken, and in that sense I believe 
that you and I are in agreement.

To help improve the situation I propose the attached patch, which 
reverts the default ./autogen.sh behavior to be './autogen.sh all', the 
way it used to be (briefly). Developers who want autogen.sh to leave 
their Git settings alone can continue to use './autogen.sh autoconf'.


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From 2c9b41624a7e32af0793eedc9d8a5e1278eb271f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 10:50:37 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] Default autogen.sh to 'all'

This addresses a problem noted by RMS in:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-08/msg00052.html
* autogen.sh (do_git): Set to true if this script is invoked
with no arguments and there is a .git subdirectory.
---
 CONTRIBUTE   | 2 +-
 INSTALL.REPO | 2 +-
 autogen.sh   | 3 ++-
 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/CONTRIBUTE b/CONTRIBUTE
index 365e423249..9b5fb090e7 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTE
+++ b/CONTRIBUTE
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Briefly, the following shell commands build and run Emacs from scratch:
 	git config --global transfer.fsckObjects true
 	git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
 	cd emacs
-	./autogen.sh all
+	./autogen.sh
 	./configure
 	make
 	src/emacs
diff --git a/INSTALL.REPO b/INSTALL.REPO
index ce346bb246..e7bb3bba03 100644
--- a/INSTALL.REPO
+++ b/INSTALL.REPO
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ To use the autotools, run the following shell command to generate the
 'configure' script and some related files, and to set up your git
 configuration:
 
-  $ ./autogen.sh all
+  $ ./autogen.sh
 
 You can then configure your build as follows:
 
diff --git a/autogen.sh b/autogen.sh
index 76fde9e18d..70f9cbd245 100755
--- a/autogen.sh
+++ b/autogen.sh
@@ -127,7 +127,8 @@ do_git=
 
 case $do_autoconf,$do_git in
   false,false)
-    do_autoconf=true;;
+    do_autoconf=true
+    test -e .git && do_git=true;;
 esac
 
 # Generate Autoconf-related files, if requested.
-- 
2.13.3