From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Still unable to build trunk Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:14:24 +0200 Message-ID: <83lj2bzdvj.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87y66fv2d3.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <4D388F7F.20708@swipnet.se> <87r5c7jk5m.fsf@stupidchicken.com> <4D39EF9C.1050804@cs.ucla.edu> <4D3A8666.4070609@cs.ucla.edu> <877hdvd49f.fsf@meyering.net> <83mxmrzhb6.fsf@gnu.org> <87vd1fbk16.fsf@meyering.net> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1295806461 28171 80.91.229.12 (23 Jan 2011 18:14:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:14:21 +0000 (UTC) Cc: cyd@stupidchicken.com, eggert@cs.ucla.edu, jan.h.d@swipnet.se, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Jim Meyering Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jan 23 19:14:16 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ph4S6-0007yb-5k for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:14:14 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:35594 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ph4S5-0005sw-Ff for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:14:13 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=55046 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ph4S0-0005sr-Ok for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:14:09 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ph4Rz-0004Le-6m for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:14:08 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:46158) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ph4Ry-0004LR-Vn for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:14:07 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0LFH00K00MD4CT00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:14:05 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([77.127.46.39]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0LFH00JUAMNF1UB0@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:14:05 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: <87vd1fbk16.fsf@meyering.net> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:134866 Archived-At: > From: Jim Meyering > Cc: eggert@cs.ucla.edu, cyd@stupidchicken.com, jan.h.d@swipnet.se, emacs-devel@gnu.org > Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:35:17 +0100 > > Requiring the installation of a few commonly-used and very portable tools > does not make a steep curve. It's more of a small, one-time investment. You forget about dependencies. And about upgrading from time to time. With every additional prerequisite, the burden gets exponentially more heavy. And it's certainly not on-time. > > Even core Emacs maintainers have trouble with these prerequisites, for > > any number of reasons (e.g., Autoconf installed on fencepost is too > > old for what Paul added to the Emacs tree, so until the GNU admins > > upgrade that at my request, I cannot build the current tree). > > Run the script below on fencepost, following the instructions > in its --help, and you should be good to go. It's not my system, so I don't want private installation of everything. My home directory there is already one of the hugest. I was asked by sysadmins to go through them in cases such as this one, in order to avoid bloating my home directory even more. Anyway, this is just an example of why adding more prerequisites is not something to do easily, IMO. > > Imagine > > what will happen to people with less experience and grey hair, > > especially if they do that on systems they don't own. > > It is most definitely a trade-off, but afaik, one that we have > managed well with coreutils, diffutils, gzip, grep, parted, etc. > On those projects, no one has reported trouble with the build process > for some time. I don't know if the comparison is valid. More importantly, the fact that the addition is due to syncing a couple of functions with gnulib is troublesome -- it sounds like a tail that wags the dog.