Re: [PATCH] Update gnulib/Makefile.in:aclocal_m4_deps

[Pedro Alves <palves at redhat dot com>]

On 08/30/2018 09:00 PM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
> On Thursday, August 30 2018, Simon Marchi wrote:
> 
>> On 2018-08-30 11:57, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:

>>>  $(srcdir)/aclocal.m4: @MAINTAINER_MODE_TRUE@ $(aclocal_m4_deps)
>>>  	cd $(srcdir) && $(ACLOCAL) $(ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS)
>>
>> This looks good to me, the set of m4 files listed here matches the
>> list of actual m4 files in import/m4.  Follow-up question, could we
>> use $(wildcard ...) instead of listing them by hand?
> 
> Yeah, I think that could work.  That's basically what I did to generate
> this list: "ls *.m4".  If you want, I can edit the patch and make it use
> $(wildcard) before pushing it.
> 

Really not sure that's a good idea.  We don't use $wildcard for listing .c files
either, for example, and I think for good reason.  It makes the set of files to build
dependent of what you happen to have or not have locally, instead of determined
statically.  That in general affects development, changing git branches, etc. 
Consider that GDB even links successfully if you miss including/linking some .c file
in the build, given the _initialize_foo registration mechanism.  Maybe not so much
an issue with the m4 files, but I'd think a more principle approach to automate this
would be to make the update-gnulib.sh script generate/update a Makefile fragment
file that contained the aclocal_m4_deps m4 files list, check that file into the
tree, and then gdb/gnulib/Makefile.in would source/include that fragment file.

Thanks,
Pedro Alves