At 3:47 AM +0900 2/24/01, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>>>>> "Dres" == James LewisMoss
<jimdres(a)mindspring.com> writes:
Dres> OK. I hate to bring this up, but looking at it the person
Dres> who reported this bug to me looks to have a point.
I don't see one, just a hyperactive imagination.
All .debs suffer from the same "bug." None of them have debian/rules
in them, but many have scripts which are surely source code. The GPL
doesn't say that just because you provide some sources in a particular
medium you have to provide them all that way.
Nor does it say anything about replicating the binary you have, only
about access to the sources used to build the binary. Debian doesn't
keep even one past copy of .diff.gz on its servers, let alone all of
them for three years!! Do you have a global CVS repository? If not,
you guys are all in big trouble by that argument....
The same argument could be applied to binary packages of GPL
software. For most of the rpms that I install, I only have binary
code. There is no source code, or Makefiles, or anything. I do not
see that as a violation of the GPL.
You don't need to package gcc with xemacs, just say that you need a compiler.
1. We're basically covered in spirit under GPL 3(b); every
XEmacs
installation that handles packages (>=20.4) should have
instructions for how to get to
cvs.xemacs.org. So maybe we have
to add a README to every package.
2. In the case of .el -> .elc, emacs itself is the Makefile! For an
individual .el, M-x byte-compile-file is all that's necessary in
most cases. M-x byte-recompile-directory for whole packages.
Where something more complex is needed, as with VM and I believe
Gnus, we do supply the upstream Makefile. If we don't it's a bug,
but only in the particular package.
The scripts and so on that exist in the xemacs-packages hierarchy
are mostly concerned with building the distribution, not with .el
-> .elc compilation. AFAIK, the GPL does not require that you
provide the tools to recreate the distribution tarballs, merely
the software.
To the extent that the clean environment affects the build, the
user would have to check out the same version of XEmacs, build it
the same way, and check out all the packages (in compilation, a
(require ...) basically includes the macros in the required file,
and they get inlined). Nobody in free software provides that
level of replicability, I don't see why we should be burdened with
it.
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