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+Maintaining Autosetup in the SQLite Tree
+========================================================================
+
+This document provides some tips and reminders for the SQLite
+developers regarding using and maintaining the [Autosetup][]-based
+build infrastructure. It is not an [Autosetup][] reference.
+
+**Table of Contents**:
+
+- [Autosetup API Reference](#apiref)
+- [API Tips](#apitips)
+- [Ensuring TCL Compatibility](#tclcompat)
+- [Design Conventions](#conventions)
+ - Symbolic Names of Feature Flags
+ - Do Not Update Global Shared State
+- [Updating Autosetup](#updating)
+ - ***[Patching Autosetup for Project-local changes](#patching)***
+- [Branch-specific Customization](#branch-customization)
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+<a name="apiref"></a>
+Autosetup API Reference
+========================================================================
+
+The Autosetup API is quite extensive and can be read either in
+the [files in the `autosetup` dir](/dir/autosetup) or using:
+
+>
+```
+$ ./configure --reference | less
+```
+
+That will include any docs from any TCL files in the `./autosetup` dir
+which contain certain (simple) markup defined by autosetup.
+
+This project's own configuration-related TCL code is spread across the
+following files:
+
+- [proj.tcl][]: project-agnostic utility code for autosetup-driven
+ projects. This file is designed to be shared between this project,
+ other projects managed under the SQLite/Hwaci umbrella
+ (e.g. Fossil), and personal projects of SQLite's developers. It is
+ essentially an amalgamation of a decade's worth of autosetup-related
+ utility code.
+- [sqlite-config.tcl][]: utility code which is too project-specific
+ for `proj.tcl`. We split this out of `auto.def` so that it can be
+ used by both `auto.def` and...
+- [auto.def][]: the primary driver for the `./configure` process.
+ When we talk about "the configure script," we're technically
+ referring to this file, though it actually contains very little
+ of the TCL code.
+- [autoconf/auto.def][]: the main driver script for the "autoconf"
+ bundle's configure script. It is essentially a slightly trimmed-down
+ version of the main `auto.def` file. The `autoconf` dir was ported
+ from the Autotools to Autosetup in the 3.49.0 dev cycle but retains
+ the "autoconf" name to minimize downstream disruption.
+
+
+<a name="apitips"></a>
+Autosetup API Tips
+========================================================================
+
+This section briefly covers only APIs which are frequently useful in
+day-to-day maintenance and might not be immediately recognized as such
+from a casual perusal of the relevant TCL files. The complete docs of
+those with `proj-` prefix can be found in [proj.tcl][] and those with
+an `sqlite-` prefix are in [sqlite-config.tcl][]. The others are part
+of Autosetup's core packages and are scattered around [the TCL files
+in ./autosetup](/dir/autosetup).
+
+In (mostly) alphabetical order:
+
+- **`file-isexec filename`**\
+ Should be used in place of `[file executable]`, as it will also
+ check for `${filename}.exe` on Windows platforms. However, on such
+ platforms it also assumes that _any_ existing file is executable.
+
+- **`get-env VAR ?default?`**\
+ Will fetch an "environment variable" from the first of either: (1) a
+ KEY=VALUE passed to the configure script or (2) the system's
+ environment variables. Not to be confused with `getenv`, which only
+ does the latter and is rarely, if ever, useful in this tree.
+ - **`proj-get-env VAR ?default?`**\
+ Works like `get-env` but will, if that function finds no match,
+ look for a file named `./.env-$VAR` and, if found, return its
+ trimmed contents. This can be used, e.g., to set a developer's
+ local preferences for the default `CFLAGS`.\
+ Tip: adding `-O0` to `.env-CFLAGS` reduces rebuild times
+ considerably at the cost of performance in `make devtest` and the
+ like.
+
+- **`proj-fatal msg`**\
+ Emits `$msg` to stderr and exits with non-zero. Its differences from
+ autosetup's `user-error` are purely cosmetic.
+
+- **`proj-if-opt-truthy flag thenScript ?elseScript?`**\
+ Evals `thenScript` if the given `--flag` is truthy, else it
+ evals the optional `elseScript`.
+
+- **`proj-indented-notice ?-error? ?-notice? msg`**\
+ Breaks its `msg` argument into lines, trims them, and emits them
+ with consistent indentation. Exactly how it emits depends on the
+ flags passed to it (or not), as covered in its docs. This will stick
+ out starkly from normal output and is intended to be used only for
+ important notices.
+
+- **`proj-opt-truthy flag`**\
+ Returns 1 if `--flag`'s value is "truthy," i.e. one of (1, on,
+ enabled, yes, true).
+
+- **`proj-opt-was-provided FLAG`**\
+ Returns 1 if `--FLAG` was explicitly provided to configure,
+ else 0. This distinction can be used to determine, e.g., whether
+ `--with-readline` was provided or whether we're searching for
+ readline by default. In the former case, failure to find it should
+ be treated as fatal, where in the latter case it's not.\
+ Unlike most functions which deal with `--flags`, this one does not
+ validate that `$FLAG` is a registered flag so will not fail fatally
+ if `$FLAG` is not registered as an Autosetup option.
+
+- **`proj-val-truthy value`**\
+ Returns 1 if `$value` is "truthy," See `proj-opt-truthy` for the definition
+ of "truthy."
+
+- **`proj-warn msg`**\
+ Emits `$msg` to stderr. Closely-related is autosetup's `user-notice`
+ (described below).
+
+- **`sqlite-add-feature-flag ?-shell? FLAG...`**\
+ Adds the given feature flag to the CFLAGS which are specific to
+ building libsqlite3. It's intended to be passed one or more
+ `-DSQLITE_ENABLE_...`, or similar, flags. If the `-shell` flag is
+ used then it also passes its arguments to
+ `sqlite-add-shell-opt`. This is a no-op if `FLAG` is not provided or
+ is empty.
+
+- **`sqlite-add-shell-opt FLAG...`**\
+ The shell-specific counterpart of `sqlite-add-feature-flag` which
+ only adds the given flag(s) to the CLI-shell-specific CFLAGS.
+
+- **`sqlite-configure BUILD-NAME {script}`**\
+ This is where all configure `--flags` are defined for all known
+ build modes ("canonical" or "autoconf"). After processing all flags,
+ this function runs `$script`, which contains the build-mode-specific
+ configuration bits, and then runs any finalization bits which are
+ common to all build modes. The `auto.def` files are intended to contain
+ exactly two commands:
+ `use sqlite-config; sqlite-configure BUILD-NAME {script}`
+
+- **`user-notice msg`**\
+ Queues `$msg` to be sent to stderr, but does not emit it until
+ either `show-notices` is called or the next time autosetup would
+ output something (it internally calls `show-notices`). This can be
+ used to generate warnings between a "checking for..." message and
+ its resulting "yes/no/whatever" message in such a way as to not
+ spoil the layout of such messages.
+
+
+<a name="tclcompat"></a>
+Ensuring TCL Compatibility
+========================================================================
+
+One of the significant benefits of using Autosetup is that (A) this
+project uses many TCL scripts in the build process and (B) Autosetup
+comes with a TCL interpreter named [JimTCL][].
+
+It is important that any TCL files used by the configure process and
+makefiles remain compatible with both [JimTCL][] and the canonical
+TCL. Though JimTCL has outstanding compatibility with canonical TCL,
+it does have a few corners with incompatibilities, e.g. regular
+expressions. If a script runs in JimTCL without using any
+JimTCL-specific features, then it's a certainty that it will run in
+canonical TCL as well. The opposite, however, is not _always_ the
+case.
+
+When [`./configure`](/file/configure) is run, it goes through a
+bootstrapping process to find a suitable TCL with which to run the
+autosetup framework. The first step involves [finding or building a
+TCL shell](/file/autosetup/autosetup-find-tclsh). That will first
+search for an available `tclsh` (under several common names,
+e.g. `tclsh8.6`) before falling back to compiling the copy of
+`jimsh0.c` included in the source tree. i.e. it will prefer to use a
+system-installed TCL for running the configure script. Once it finds
+(or builds) a TCL shell, it then runs [a sanity test to ensure that
+the shell is suitable](/file/autosetup/autosetup-test-tclsh) before
+using it to run the main autosetup app.
+
+There are two simple ways to ensure that running of the configure
+process uses JimTCL instead of the canonical `tclsh`, and either
+approach provides equally high assurances about configure script
+compatibility across TCL implementations:
+
+1. Build on a system with no `tclsh` installed in the `$PATH`. In that
+ case, the configure process will fall back to building the in-tree
+ copy of JimTCL.
+
+2. Manually build `./jimsh0` in the top of the checkout with:\
+ `cc -o jimsh0 autosetup/jimsh0.c`\
+ With that in place, the configure script will prefer to use that
+ before looking for a system-level `tclsh`. Be aware, though, that
+ `make distclean` will remove that file.
+
+**Note that `./jimsh0` is distinctly different from the `./jimsh`**
+which gets built for code-generation purposes. The latter requires
+non-default build flags to enable features which are
+platform-dependent, most notably to make its `[file normalize]` work.
+This means, for example, that the configure script and its utility
+APIs must not use `[file normalize]`, but autosetup provides a
+TCL-only implementation of `[file-normalize]` (note the dash) for
+portable use in the configure script. Contrariwise, code-generation
+scripts invoked via `make` may use `[file normalize]`, as they'll use
+`./jimsh` or `tclsh` instead of `./jimsh0`.
+
+
+Known TCL Incompatibilities
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+A summary of known incompatibilities in JimTCL
+
+- **CRNL line endings**: prior to 2025-02-05 `fconfigure -translation ...`
+ was a no-op in JimTCL, and it emits CRNL line endings by default on
+ Windows. Since then, it supports `-translation binary`, which is
+ close enough to `-translation lf` for our purposes. When working
+ with files using the `open` command, it is important to use mode
+ `"rb"` or `"wb"`, as appropriate, so that the output does not get
+ CRNL-mangled on Windows.
+
+- **`file copy`** does not support multiple source files. See
+ [](/info/61f18c96183867fe) for a workaround.
+
+- **Regular expressions**:
+
+ - Patterns treat `\nnn` octal values as back-references (which it
+ does not support). Those can be reformulated as demonstrated in
+ [](/info/aeac23359bb681c0).
+
+ - `regsub` does not support the `\y` flag. A workaround is demonstrated
+ in [](/info/c2e5dd791cce3ec4).
+
+
+<a name="conventions"></a>
+Design Conventions
+========================================================================
+
+This section describes the motivations for the most glaring of the
+build's design decisions, in particular how they deviate from
+historical, or even widely-conventional, practices.
+
+Symbolic Names of Feature Flags
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Historically, the project's makefile has exclusively used
+`UPPER_UNDERSCORE` form for makefile variables. This build, however,
+primarily uses `X.y` format, where `X` is often a category label,
+e.g. `CFLAGS`, and `y` is the specific instance of that category,
+e.g. `CFLAGS.readline`.
+
+When the configure script exports flags for consumption by filtered
+files, e.g. [Makefile.in][] and the generated
+`sqlite_cfg.h`, it does so in the more conventional `X_Y` form because
+those flags get exported as as C `#define`s to `sqlite_cfg.h`, where
+dots are not permitted.
+
+The `X.y` convention is used in the makefiles primarily because the
+person who did the initial port finds that considerably easier on the
+eyes and fingers. In practice, the `X_Y` form of such exports is used
+exactly once in [Makefile.in][], where it's translated from `@X_Y@`
+into into `X.y` form for consumption by [Makefile.in][] and
+[main.mk][]. For example:
+
+>
+```
+LDFLAGS.shobj = @SHOBJ_LDFLAGS@
+LDFLAGS.zlib = @LDFLAGS_ZLIB@
+LDFLAGS.math = @LDFLAGS_MATH@
+```
+
+(That first one is defined by autosetup, and thus applies "LDFLAGS" as
+the suffix rather than the prefix. Which is more legible is a matter
+of taste, for which there is no accounting.)
+
+
+Do Not Update Global Shared State
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+In both the legacy Autotools-driven build and common Autosetup usage,
+feature tests performed by the configure script may amend global flags
+such as `LIBS`, `LDFLAGS`, and `CFLAGS`[^as-cflags]. That's
+appropriate for a makefile which builds a single deliverable, but less
+so for makefiles which produce multiple deliverables. Drawbacks of
+that approach include:
+
+- It's unlikely that every single deliverable will require the same
+ core set of those flags.
+- It can be difficult to determine the origin of any given change to
+ that global state because those changes are hidden behind voodoo
+ performed outside the immediate visibility of the configure script's
+ maintainer.
+- It can force the maintainers of the configure script to place tests
+ in a specific order so that the resulting flags get applied at
+ the correct time and/or in the correct order.\
+ (A real-life example: before the approach described below was taken
+ to collecting build-time flags, the test for `-rpath` had to come
+ _after_ the test for zlib because the results of the `-rpath` test
+ implicitly modified global state which broke the zlib feature
+ test. Because the feature tests no longer (intentionally) modify
+ shared global state, that is not an issue.)
+
+In this build, cases where feature tests modify global state in such a
+way that it may impact later feature tests are either (A) very
+intentionally defined to do so (e.g. the `--with-wasi-sdk` flag has
+invasive side-effects) or (B) are oversights (i.e. bugs).
+
+This tree's [configure script][auto.def], [utility APIs][proj.tcl],
+[Makefile.in][], and [main.mk][] therefore strive to separate the
+results of any given feature test into its own well-defined
+variables. For example:
+
+- The linker flags for zlib are exported from the configure script as
+ `LDFLAGS_ZLIB`, which [Makefile.in][] and [main.mk][] then expose as
+ `LDFLAGS.zlib`.
+- `CFLAGS_READLINE` (a.k.a. `CFLAGS.readline`) contains the `CFLAGS`
+ needed for including `libreadline`, `libedit`, or `linenoise`, and
+ `LDFLAGS_READLINE` (a.k.a. `LDFLAGS.readline`) is its link-time
+ counterpart.
+
+It is then up to the Makefile to apply and order the flags however is
+appropriate.
+
+At the end of the configure script, the global `CFLAGS` _ideally_
+holds only flags which are either relevant to all targets or, failing
+that, will have no unintended side-effects on any targets. That said:
+clients frequently pass custom `CFLAGS` to `./configure` or `make` to
+set library-level feature toggles, e.g. `-DSQLITE_OMIT_FOO`, in which
+case there is no practical way to avoid "polluting" the builds of
+arbitrary makefile targets with those. _C'est la vie._
+
+
+[^as-cflags]: But see this article for a detailed discussion of how
+ autosetup currently deals specifically with CFLAGS:
+ <https://msteveb.github.io/autosetup/articles/handling-cflags/>
+
+
+<a name="updating"></a>
+Updating Autosetup
+========================================================================
+
+Updating autosetup is, more often than not, painless. It requires having
+a checked-out copy of [the autosetup git repository][autosetup-git]:
+
+>
+```
+$ git clone https://github.com/msteveb/autosetup
+$ cd autosetup
+# Or, if it's already checked out:
+$ git pull
+```
+
+Then, from the top-most directory of an SQLite checkout:
+
+>
+```
+$ /path/to/autosetup-checkout/autosetup --install .
+$ fossil status # show the modified files
+```
+
+Unless the upgrade made any incompatible changes (which is exceedingly
+rare), that's all there is to it. After that's done, **apply a patch
+for the change described in the following section**, test the
+configure process, and check it in.
+
+<a name="patching"></a>
+Patching Autosetup for Project-local Changes
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Autosetup reserves the flag name **`--debug`** for its own purposes,
+and its own special handling of `--enable-...` flags makes `--debug`
+an alias for `--enable-debug`. As this project has a long history of
+using `--enable-debug`, we patch autosetup to use the name
+`--autosetup-debug` in place of `--debug`. That requires (as of this
+writing) four small edits in [](/file/autosetup/autosetup), as
+demonstrated in [check-in 3296c8d3](/info/3296c8d3).
+
+If autosetup is upgraded and this patch is _not_ applied the invoking
+`./configure` will fail loudly because of the declaration of the
+`debug` flag in `auto.def` - duplicated flags are not permitted.
+
+<a name="branch-customization"></a>
+Branch-specific Customization
+========================================================================
+
+Certain vendor-specific branches require slight configure script
+customization. Rather than editing `sqlite-config.tcl` for this,
+which frequently leads to merge conflicts, the following approach
+is recommended:
+
+In the vendor-specific branch, create a file named
+`autosetup/sqlite-custom.tcl`.
+
+That file should contain the following content...
+
+If flag customization is required, add:
+
+>
+```
+proc sqlite-custom-flags {} {
+ # If any existing --flags require different default values
+ # then call:
+ options-defaults {
+ flag-name new-default-value
+ ...
+ }
+ # ^^^ That will replace the default value but will not update
+ # the --help text, which may lead to some confusion:
+ # https://github.com/msteveb/autosetup/issues/77
+
+ return {
+ {*} {
+ new-flag-name => {Help text}
+ ...
+ }
+ }; #see below
+}
+```
+
+That function must return either an empty string or a list in the form
+used internally by `sqlite-config.tcl:sqlite-configure`.
+
+Next, define:
+
+>
+```
+proc sqlite-custom-handle-flags {} {
+ ... do any custom flag handling here ...
+}
+```
+
+That function, if defined, will be called relatively late in the
+configure process, before any filtered files are generated but after
+all other significant processing.
+
+
+[Autosetup]: https://msteveb.github.io/autosetup/
+[auto.def]: /file/auto.def
+[autoconf/auto.def]: /file/autoconf/auto.def
+[autosetup-git]: https://github.com/msteveb/autosetup
+[proj.tcl]: /file/autosetup/proj.tcl
+[sqlite-config.tcl]: /file/autosetup/sqlite-config.tcl
+[Makefile.in]: /file/Makefile.in
+[main.mk]: /file/main.mk
+[JimTCL]: https://jim.tcl.tk