[gnutls-devel] Difference between 'tools' and 'libraries' for GNUtls development?

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 8:52 AM, Mark Brown <markb at lowsnr.net> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I am trying to build GNUtls from the latest sources, and have the
> following observations.
>
> (1) Dependencies
>
> There are two types of dependency:
> - tools needed to build GNUtls (compilers, make and the like)
> - external libraries that GNUtls may require
> The section "Development" on the page http://gnutls.org/devel.html
> refers to development *tools* in README-alpha
> (https://gitlab.com/gnutls/gnutls/blob/master/README-alpha.md).
> There is no mention of the libraries required to build GNUtls.

Hi,
 It doesn't separate between libraries and tools because in the end
both are simply packages you install in your distribution.

> However, README-alpha.md includes libtasn1 and libidn. Are actually
> tools, or are they libraries?

libtasn1 is both, libidn is a library.

> Also, GMP is needed to build GNUtls but is not listed anywhere.

GMP is a nettle dependency so it is used indirectly only. That's why
it is not listed.

> It would be nice to distinguish between tools and libraries, and to
> include GMP for completeness.

What would be the benefit? It may be that I'm too accustomed to a
typical Linux system where everything is package. Nevertheless, feel
free to send a patch which does this separation if that would ease
your work-flow.

> (2) Build instructions
>
> The commands listed on http://gnutls.org/devel.html are not consistent
> with the contents of README-alpha.md. Specifically, the former specifies
> 'make autoreconf' while the latter specifies 'make bootstrap'. Which is
> correct? (The two sources should also be made consistent.)

Both are correct. I'll make them consistent though. Thanks.

regards,
Nikos