[rb-general] GNU coding standards discussion

[Ian Jackson]

Ximin Luo writes ("Re: [rb-general] GNU coding standards discussion"):
> OK, I understand now. I guess this is a fundamental difference
> between source-installation and binary-installation. I'd suggest
> definitions something along these lines:
> [etc.]

Thanks for your thoughts.  Much of what you say makes a lot of sense
to me.

> That is why it may be simpler, to instead comment about (e.g.) the
> bit-to-bit-reproducibility of the tarballs of the installation trees

I can see why this seems like a good idea.  I think it would be better
to provide a definition which was semantically equivalent but not
couched in terms of tarballs.

> As for the documentation locale issue, I would suggest that if the
> user wants documentation built in a non-UTF-8 locale then they
> should pass a flag to ./configure to set this up. But perhaps this
> would cause too much effort.

Surely we wouldn't want to break those users' builds (ie, have them
produce documentation that they cannot read!).  The configure flag you
suggest could be called --dont-do-always-utf-thing-noone-ever-wants
(since it would only have any effect in non-UTF-8 locales).

> Anyway, this does not matter too much -
> as long as you do enumerate exactly what you consider to be (2)
> "user-configuration" inputs, so that binary distributions like
> Debian know what to fix as constants.

I think that's a better approach.

I will try to think about what you've said and I'll write up a new
draft definition.  But if you would like to do so first, please go
ahead and I'll review it and/or edit it and/or pass it on.

Regards,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson at chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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