Simon Josefsson wrote:
> >> It is not widely packaged by distributions (I think) directly, so access
> >> to the latest non-vendored version of those files is fairly obscure.
> >>
> >> Would it make sense to move the files to gnulib?
> >
> > Gnulib is already redistributing the latest versions of these files.
> > I don't see the problem that you see.
>
> There is a growing trend to avoid vendoring files, because of bit-rot
> and supply-chain concerns among other reasons, and while it is not
> really enforced well in many places yet, I do believe vendoring files is
> something we should try to reduce. There are much larger problems than
> the 'config' files, but I think this sets a bad example for important
> files that are executed by almost anyone running ./configure.
>
> That's the only problem I see
For normal users, GNU distributes tarballs, which includes files that
are centrally maintained (mostly config.{guess,sub}, gnulib stuff,
but also some build-aux/ files like install-sh.
For experienced users, most packages have a git repository that does NOT
include these files. This git repository sometimes has an indication
which gnulib version to use. For the other files, "always the newest"
is the implied recommendation, because config.{guess,sub} and install-sh
are maintained in a backward-compatible way.
So, users already have the choice.
The way to get the newest config.{guess,sub} is widely known:
1) They contain themselves a note
# You can get the latest version of this script from:
# https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/config.git/plain/config.guess
2) Some packages do
$GNULIB_TOOL --copy-file build-aux/config.guess; chmod a+x
build-aux/config.guess
$GNULIB_TOOL --copy-file build-aux/config.sub; chmod a+x
build-aux/config.sub
3) Other packages do
for file in config.guess config.sub; do
wget -q --timeout=5 -O build-aux/$file.tmp
"http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=blob_plain;f=build-aux/${file};hb=HEAD";
&& mv $file.tmp $file
done
as documented in
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/config_002eguess.html
So, I still don't understand what you mean by "access [to] those files is
fairly obscure". What else could be done? Do you want to see them regularly
uploaded to ftp.gnu.org, like texinfo.tex is (at
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo.tex) ? What would be the benefit of
having yet another, alternative way of obtaining these files?
Or, when you say "vendoring files is something we should try to reduce",
what else do you mean? Getting rid of config.{guess,sub} entirely? How?
Bruno
