Findutils and its (currently incorrect) use of gnulib

[James Youngman]

Findutils uses the "gnulib" facilities for enhanced portability of
GNU-system-like functions.   In order to persuade the Findutils
sources to build with current versions of the autotools, I've updated
the gnulib code in Findutils from the gnulib code in CVS.  

The result is that I can now build Findutils on GNU/Linux.
Unfortunately, it doesn't build on Solaris 2.8 (which I am using as an
example of a system on which Findutils actually needs the gnulib
replacements).  

I think the reason for this is that gnulib expects its components to
live in ${srcdir}/m4 and ${srcdir}/lib.  Unfortunately, I can't put
them there since Findutils has its own lib/ directory (containing
library stuff which isn't in gnulib).  Hence I've put gnulib into
${srcdir}/gnulib.

The configure scripts run fine, until (in the case of Solaris) they
try to symlink "fnmatch_.h", the header file for the replacement
fnmatch function, to fnmatch.h.  This fails because gnulib expects
fnmatch_.h to be at ${srcdir)/lib/fnmatch_.h.

Therefore, I am using gnulib incorrectly.

However, I am not familiar enough with gnulib to determine what I
should have done.  If you have some understanding of gnulib or are
prepared to take a look anyway, I'd be grateful if you could look at
the problem and suggest a resolution.  

You can obtain a set of code which exhibits the problem by checking
out a branch from the Savannah CVS repository as follows :-


cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/cvsroot/findutils login
cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/cvsroot/findutils co 
-rjy_branch_2003_05_24_gnulib_update findutils

(note that here you are checking out a branch from the CVS repository,
not the code on the trunk)

Once the CVS checkout has completed, you should then follow the brief
instructions in README-CVS to obtain a copy of gnulib and generate the
"configure" script.  After that, the build process is exactly the same
as it would be on a normal source tarball (configure && make && make
check).

It's looking to me as if the tactic I have employed in the
"import-gnulib.sh" script (see the README-CVS file) is not ever going
to work.  The question is, what should I do instead?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
James.

-- 
James Youngman, Manchester, UK.  Telephone +44 161 445 1998
Findutils Home Page: http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/
Findutils Bug Reporting https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils