On 12/25/22 20:36, Paul Eggert wrote:
> I installed the attached patch to gzip and updated the bootstrap 
> script to current Gnulib.

Unfortunately that didn't work because the new bootstrap script comes in 
two flavors: a standalone gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap that automatically 
replaces itself, and a librarified gnulib/top/bootstrap that needs three 
auxiliary files in the repository. I put the latter script into the gzip 
repository but did not put the auxiliary files there. I did not notice 
the error in my testing, since the three auxiliary files were there in 
my working copy.

Although eventually I found this problem, and fixed it by committing the 
three auxiliary files into the gzip repository, it strikes me that the 
process would be simpler and less error-prone if 'bootstrap' stayed a 
single script in gzip. gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap attempted to do that, 
but operated by replacing itself, which led to confusion when one did a 
'git diff' later on.

To make this easier I changed gnulib/build-aux/bootstrap so that it 
doesn't need to replace itself. Instead, it has options --pull and 
--gen, so that './bootstrap --pull' is equivalent to librarified 
./autopull.sh and './bootstrap --gen' is equivalent to librarified 
./autogen.sh. These new options work regardless of whether one uses the 
standalone or the librarified bootstrap, and the standalone bootstrap 
need not replace itself when it runs.

I propagated this into gzip by installing the attached patch, the only 
creative part of which is its README-hacking change. The rest simply 
syncs from Gnulib, using the standalone bootstrap instead of the 
librarified one.

Assuming this sort of thing works out, I'd like to do something similar 
with grep, diffutils, etc. Emacs will be a different matter as it does 
not use 'bootstrap' anyway.