Re: installable gnulib library

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Bruce,

On 27 Sep 2008, at 01:02, Bruce Korb wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Gary V. Vaughan <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I have an (undoubtedly caffeine induced) idea... why not enhance  
> > gnulib to
> > provide a shim that sits between the system libraries and client  
> > code that
> > wants to use it without shipping (another copy) of the particular  
> > parts it
> > depends upon?
> >
> > If we add a compile-and-install-everything-as-a-library mode to  
> > gnulib, many
> > GNU packages could stop distributing the MiBs of autotools'  
> > generated glue,
> > and instead go with a much lighter build system that simply depends  
> > on
> > gnulib API semantics, and requires that gnulib be installed.  For  
> > many
> > modern systems, the installed gnulib might turn out to be vanishingly
> > small... and for many old and broken systems, having just one copy  
> > of gnulib
> > in shared memory ought to provide a nice improvement to speed and  
> > memory
> > utilisation.
> >
> > Please tell me I'm crazy right now.  Or at least before I waste the  
> > next few
> > months of my free time figuring out how to do it.
>
> Hey Gary,
>
> Long ago, far away and years ago, that is *precisely* the point I  
> was making.
> (Remember the autotool bake-off contest?)

I remember it well.  Code Sourcery.

>  My thinking then (and now) is that
> you just make your project depend upon the pre-installation of this  
> common
> glue package.  Glue layer not installed?  Then your's won't install  
> either.

Yep.

> I think some folks won't buy into it because they don't want another  
> dependency
> for their projects.  (I think that was the main objection to my
> proposal for that long-ago "contest".

Really?  I thought the main objection was that writing the glue layer  
would
take a man-decade of effort.

The thing that struck me a few days ago was that gnulib actually  
provides
all the code that such a shim would need, only it has to be copied  
piece-meal
into the packages that want to take advantage of it as it stands.  
Although it
does that very well.

Outside of the autotool and GNU communities, the vast majority of  
people I
encounter strongly dislike the difficulty of using autotools in client
packages, and the megabyte or two of shell scripts and m4 macros that  
every
GNU package seems to carry around with it.  Wouldn't it be great if we  
only
had to run that stuff *once* (when installing gnulib) and every other
command-line package that paid attention could remove all of their  
autotools
glue?

>  Can't seem to put together the right Google search to
> dredge it up again...)

I'm not sure it's still around in that form any more :)

> Anyway, at least _I'd_ like to see it.  :-D

And no one is telling me I'm an idiot yet... looks like a green light  
to me :D

Cheers,
        Gary
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