On 21 Feb 2022 16:26, Karl Berry wrote: > should we change "unknown" to $GID & $UID respectively ? > > I guess it couldn't hurt, although I doubt it makes any difference in > practice.
i feel like you just accidentally wrote Automake's motto :p > if test $am_uid = "unknown"; then > > Don't we usually avoid quoting constant strings? I.e.: > if test "$am_uid" = unknown; then tbh, i have no idea what the quoting style/preference is in the GNU world, if there actually is one. i know i see plenty of underquoting, and plenty of odd `test` styles that aren't well documented (like using the "x" prefix to avoid testing empty strings). > AC_MSG_WARN([ancient id detected; assuming current UID is ok, but > dist-ustar might not work]) > > "Might"? Either it works or it doesn't? Anyway, who ever uses ustar? > Never seen it. we won't know whether it works until we actually try to create an archive. and depending on the system, that might be too late (see below). > Anyway, seems like such a warning "might" be useful when producing an > archive with automake (running make dist), but not when running > configure. When merely doing "./configure && make", ustar is irrelevant. sure, but we don't probe tools during `make dist`, we do it during configure > Anyway #2, I think the chances of someone wanting to produce a ustar > archive on a system with old id is zero. > > Thus I suggest just fixing the syntax stuff and letting it go at that. ustar might not be the most common nowadays. i think there's merit to issuing a warning so we aren't in the situation of people reporting bugs that `make dist` threw a weird error they don't understand, and if their system was in such a bad state, why weren't they warned about it ? in fact, isn't that what led to these checks in the first place ? we have reports from users: https://bugs.gnu.org/8343 https://bugs.gnu.org/13588 > the point of the checks isn't just to annoy the user. > > No :)? That's what it seems like. Helpful to the package developer; > annoyance to the configure user. -k configure user can (re)create dist tarballs too. not the common flow, but it can be helpful when you're hacking on a system and want to pull the state back out. or when trying to comply with the GPL requirements :). the reason your system hit this code path is because it wasn't able to handle the formats earlier in the list (gnutar in this case). -mike
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature