Re: broken check: You should edit tm.texi.in rather than tm.texi

[Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com>]

On 11/23/20 1:25 PM, Joseph Myers wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2020, Martin Sebor via Gcc wrote:
> 
>> I'd expect the best way to ensure the two copies of the contributed
>> text are in sync is to copy it automatically.  If the only point of
>> asking the author to do it by hand each time they change the file
>> is to "Verify that they have permission to grant a GFDL license"
>> than that step could be done once, the result recorded somewhere
>> (e.g., in the MAINTAINERS file), and automated when making changes
>> by having the script look it up.
> 
> That permission is a function of the particular change being made (if it
> involves text previously in GPL-only parts of GCC being copied into the
> GFDL manual, that needs a docstring relicensing review), not just of the
> person making the change.

I see.  So this check is in place just for the case of copying
someone else's text from some other manual to the internals manual.

Either way, though, asking the person making the change to verify
they have a permission to do it isn't sufficient.  If they're not
the author of the text being copied or one of the two roles above
then how can they verify it?  I wouldn't know how and I'd be
shocked if I was alone.

Even if we could verify it, it's unnecessary to make the build
fail every time we change the file and force us to copy it by
hand.  It seems to me a better time/place to do this, now that
we have Git, is by a commit hook, advising the committer that
they should seek the licensing review.  Even this could be
avoided if the commit message somehow indicated the licensing
review was done (e.g., by a Reviewed-By tag naming one of
the special reviewers).

Is implementing something like this feasible?

Martin