[tex-k] lcdf-typetools and TeX live

[Peter Breitenlohner]

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Eddie Kohler wrote:

> Thanks for doing this, but I find this diff is a lot to swallow at one go.
>
> - Does the new version of automake require dist_man_MANS?

Certainly not, but I wanted to keep the original Makefile.am's as
Makefile.am.orig and for that needed EXTRA_DIST.

Shall I drop the Makefile.am.orig's and configure.ac.orig?

If you prefer
 	man_MANS = foo.1
 	EXTRA_DIST =foo.1
over
 	dist_man_MANS = foo.1
fine with me.

I'd however strongly suugest to use
 	AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign ...])
once in configure.ac, instead of
 	AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign
in each Makefile.am.

And I sort of insist the 'make distcheck' succeeds.

> - Why do you include fixlibc.c unconditionally?

No part of fixlibc.c is compiled unless needed (current standard practice, e.g.
in gnulibc). If you prefer the somewhat roundabout way to have several
tests, each one possibly requiring fixlibc.c to be compiled, fine with me.

However, I have strong objections against FIXLIBC_O with its .o vs. .obj
complication.

Having something like
 	if need_fixlibc
 	liblcdf_a_SOURCES += fixlibc.c
 	endif need_fixlibc
in liblcdf/Makefile.am together with
 	AM_CONDITIONAL([need_fixlibc], [test "x$need_fixlibc" = xyes])
in configure.ac is certainly fine.

> - Why up autoconf prereq to 2.63?

Sort of required (any 2.6x is probably OK, but much older versions aren't),
some TeX live M4 macros require features introduced not too long ago

> - Why do you remove "#define inline inline" etc.?

Superfluous with modern Autoconf; the "#define inline" is nowadays
surrounded by "#ifndef __cplusplus" ... "#endif".

Want to keep it?

> - Why have both m4/ and ac/ directories?  Would rather just have m4/.

They serve somewhat different purposes: m4/ contains  macros called from
configure.ac, whereas ac/ contains fragments included into configure.ac.

The ac/withenable.ac is required for a TeX live build, but not used in a
standalone build and could certainly be dropped.  If you really want the
AC_CXX_TEMPLATE_OBJS inline, then all the kpse_* macros could also go to
ac/.  Inside the TeX live tree they would in any case be in ../../m4 in
order to avoid having multiple copies.

> - You libtoolized this?

Necessary, since libkpathsea is a libtool library, that might be static,
shared, or both. Only used to link otftotfm.

> - Why bother moving the AC_CXX_TEMPLATE_OBJS function into m4/, why not leave 
> it where it is?

Can do, but needed corrections. The current Autoconf recommendation is,
however, to have "foreign" as well as own macros in a separate directory
(typically m4). If you want to keep it inline, fine.

> - Why build-aux?

Also common practice.  Would be ../../build-aux inside the TeX live tree to
have just one centralized copy of all these files. If you prefer to have
them in your main directory, your decision.

> I would really rather that you separate generic cleanups from the changes 
> really required for texlive.  I don't have the time or energy to do this 
> separation for you, and although I want lcdf-typetools to work well with 
> texlive, I am afraid of breaking it for others.

Fair enough. I'll even keep the changequotes (although the Autoconf manual
strongly argues for correct M4 quoting and against changequotes).

I'll wait for your answer to my comments/questions above, and will then undo
part of my changes according to your decisions.

BTW: Karl Berry just sent me a mail that he also prefers --enable, e.g.,
   --disable-lcdf-typetools   do not build the lcdf-typetools package
   --disable-cfftot1              do not build the cfftot1 program
   ....
Is the extra indentation a problem for you?

Regards,
Peter