Paul Eggert wrote:
> I find gnulib-tool hard to use for this sort of thing. If I see a file 
> m4/xyz.m4 that I don't know why it's there, it's not easy for me to see 
> the path from m4/xyz.m4 to the Gnulib modules that bootstrap.conf 
> specifies. It'd be nice if gnulib-tool had an option to do that.
> 
> > Looking at the starting points in gzip/bootstrap.conf, I can see at least
> > this dependency chain:
> > 
> >    yesno → rpmatch → regex → wctype → iswxdigit
> 
> Unfortunately that example underscores the need for the gnulib-tool 
> option

I agree with that feeling: It would be useful if gnulib-tool had an option
  gnulib-tool --show-dependency-chains MODULE REQ-MODULE1 ... REQ-MODULEn
so that
  $ gnulib-tool --show-dependency-chains iswxdigit yesno
would print the above line (among others).

If I could easily spot the yesno → rpmatch → regex → wctype → iswxdigit
it's because I'm very familiar with many modules; most users aren't.

But from my side, that will have to wait until I have fixed the breakage
of today and completed the other thing that is on the TODO list for
coreutils 9.11.

> It might be helpful to add more options like 
> GNULIB_MBRTOWC_SINGLE_THREAD as a better way of doing things for code 
> that is single-threaded and/or single-locale, compared to using "--avoid 
> lock" and omitting f?printf-posix, but I didn't explore that possibility.

Yes, I think such GNULIB_*_SINGLE_THREAD options are the better way to go.
You don't need to implement this all by yourself. Just make a concrete
proposal, that we can evaluate and judge for usefulness, before implementing.

Bruno




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