Paul Eggert wrote: > > The practical drawback would be that the --symlink option, in the > > coreutils situation, will copy more files and symlink less files. > > That's a serious drawback, at least for the way I work. When I > develop, I commonly edit the gnulib copies and expect coreutils to > track the changes.
Understood. > Another possibility is to have two copies of the file in gnulib, one > GPL'ed and one LGPL'ed. We could automatically generate one copy from > the other. I wouldn't do that: Redundant copies do eventually get out of sync. They cause perpetual occasional trouble. Since you want to work directly on symlinks to gnulib files: how about two other options? a) Add another option to gnulib that avoids the license changes altogether. You would use this option; Jim when making release tarballs would not. Drawback: Jim needs a special directory for making release tarballs. b) Push back the license substitution moment to "make dist". I.e. You work on symlinks to gnulib files that carry mixed GPL/LGPL notices, but "make dist" creates a tarball with only GPL notices. Bruno