On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Gary V. Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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?) 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. 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". Can't seem to put together the right Google search to dredge it up again...) Anyway, at least _I'd_ like to see it. :-D Cheers - Bruce
