[bug #17794] error: possibly undefined macro: gl_LOCK_EARLY

[Eric Blake]

Follow-up Comment #6, bug #17794 (project coreutils):

If it serves as any reference point, M4 1.4.6 includes its bootstrap in its
tarball.  Someone using the tarball is expected to neither run bootstrap nor
to run autoreconf (a fact that automake checks during 'make distcheck'), but
the files are still shipped should they choose to rather than forcing them to
check m4 out from CVS, similar to how configure.ac or Makefile.am is included
in the tarball.  On the other hand, running bootstrap implies that you have
checked out gnulib from CVS, so omitting bootstrap from the tarball isn't too
severe because by the time a user has grabbed gnulib from CVS, they can go all
the way grab the bootstrap script and rest of the package from CVS as well.

As to the original report, running autoreconf on a package without first
checking whether it works without modifications is risky.  The fact that it
triggered a failure here should not come as a surprise, because it is not
recommended practice; indeed, coreutils 6.2 depends on files that are newer
than what gettext 0.15 provides, but gettext 0.15.1 has not yet been
released, so autoreconf alone is helpless to do the job correctly.  But maybe
there is a bug report against gettext here, for the fact that autopoint
blindly replaces macros to older versions rather than trusting that a newer
version of the macro does not need to be downgraded to what that macro used
to be at the time of the gettext release.


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