Re: Last commit breaks macOS build

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2017 19:21:11 -0800
> 
> This is caused by our recent attempt to better-automate MS-Windows builds. I 
> fixed one nonportable construct, but evidently there are others.

Yes, sorry about that.  Mea culpa.

> It's time to break out a bigger hammer. Please try the attached patch. I have 
> tested it on Fedora, but not on MS-Windows and so have not installed it yet.

I'd prefer to avoid the need for the people who maintain the
MS-Windows build to understand the structure of lib/gnulib.mk in too
many details, such as what files comprise each Gnulib package, and
what is the meaning of the likes of EXTRA_libgnu_a_SOURCES.  OTOH, I'd
prefer not to bother people who merge from Gnulib with understanding
what parts the MS-Windows build needs to avoid.

Having a simple list of Gnulib packages to remove from lib/gnulib.mk,
similar to nt/gnulib-modules-to-delete.cfg, is therefore preferable to
a much more detailed list that you propose to maintain manually in
lib/Makefile.am.  It is also simpler, since the syntax of Makefile.am
doesn't need to be familiar to whoever modifies the list of modules.

Is it possible to use a similar plain list of modules while solving
this with GNU Make features?  If not, I think we should stick with the
current solution.  It's not a bad one, I think, once we clean up the
portability issues.  (I just tried to solve a couple of such issues.)

Thanks.