Re: [PATCH] Check for existence of asprintf and vasprintf

[Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp dot org>]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 11:18:53AM +0100, Ulf Hermann wrote:
> First, I'm not sure if we want to import the respective gnulib modules
> directly into the elfutils code base or if you want me to do this in
> my fork. In the latter case the issue is settled as there is no value
> for me in jumping through hoops if the code is not going to be
> upstreamed anyway. So, for now I'm assuming we're talking about
> importing gnulib modules into the elfutils code base.

I would be fine with integrating gnulib code upstream.
Since we already have a lib and m4 directory it would probably
be easiest if we use a new gnulib and gnulib-m4 top-level dir
for that. And we'll have to figure out what the best way to handle
the sources in the repository is. I think I would prefer option 3
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/VCS-Issues.html
So normal developers don't need to have gnulib itself installed.
The release manager would run gnulib-tool --update before release.
But maybe there are other ways that are more natural to support?

> > gnulib-tool has a --lgpl=[...] flag so you can automatically abort if
> > the desired license compatibility level isn't met.  so you don't have
> > to directly review every module if it isn't aborting.
> 
> Are you aware that for most of those modules, building them into elfutils
> restricts the license choices for the resulting combination? Any
> non-trivial combination of the required modules with elfutils makes the
> result de facto GPLv3 only. GPLv3 is fine for me as perfparser is also
> GPLv3, but as elfutils so far is LGPLv3+/GPLv2+ I'm wondering if we want
> to do this. In fact, when just doing the usual
> "configure/make/make install" procedure without reviewing the
> intermediate results, a user would have no way of knowing what license
> applies to the binaries. IMO that is bad and will certainly lead to
> problems somewhere down the line.

As long as everything is upward compatible with GPLv3+ I think that is
fine. It will only be an issue on non-GNU/Linux setups. But we should
indeed make clear during configure time when extra license requirements
would apply because gnulib code is being used/imported. Maybe we can
just have configure warn/error out "Your setup requires importing of
GPLv3+ gnulib code, please configure with --enable-gplv3-gnulib".
Or something like that.

Cheers,

Mark