From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jim Meyering Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Still unable to build trunk Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:47:04 +0100 Message-ID: <87bp37bgpj.fsf@meyering.net> 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> <83lj2bzdvj.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1295808444 4518 80.91.229.12 (23 Jan 2011 18:47:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:47:24 +0000 (UTC) Cc: cyd@stupidchicken.com, eggert@cs.ucla.edu, jan.h.d@swipnet.se, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jan 23 19:47:19 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 1Ph4y6-00082e-Qk for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:47:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:40297 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ph4y6-0006lS-B1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:47:18 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=49673 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ph4y0-0006l2-3i for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:47:13 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ph4xy-0002ON-Om for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:47:11 -0500 Original-Received: from mx.meyering.net ([82.230.74.64]:35236) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Ph4xu-0002Mt-FM; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:47:06 -0500 Original-Received: by rho.meyering.net (Acme Bit-Twister, from userid 1000) id 019D66008A; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:47:04 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <83lj2bzdvj.fsf@gnu.org> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:14:24 +0200") Original-Lines: 78 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) 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:134867 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> 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. Hardly. The few programs we're talking about (mainly just m4, automake and autoconf) have very few dependencies. > And about upgrading from time to time. If fencepost were upgraded more often, this would not be a problem. If you're worried about one of these privately-installed packages being invalidated by a (rare) upgrade, then just rerun the script to install them from scratch again. > With every additional prerequisite, the burden gets exponentially more > heavy. And it's certainly not on-time. People participating in emacs development (even if only building from latest cloned sources) can be expected to follow a few simple instructions. If they have to rerun a few commands after someone else upgrades their development system, that does not strike me as an unreasonable burden, and certainly not as an exponentially heavy one. >> > 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. If you run the script and have it install only m4, automake and autoconf, the result occupies less than 6MiB. > 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. I see that you're using over 22GiB(!) there. Remove just one of your many emacs-*.tar.gz files and that will free far more space than any tiny tool installation would consume. > Anyway, this is just an example of why adding more prerequisites is > not something to do easily, IMO. If we recoil from every task that at first appears nontrivial, we will never make progress. >> > 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. I have endured more than my fair share of conflicts due to version-controlled sources that are also generated by the build process. That taught me that avoiding such trouble is well worth this type of investment. Re "just a couple gnulib functions", Paul deliberately made the initial introduction small. There are many more opportunities.