On Sunday 02 January 2011, Ralf Wildenhues wrote: > Hello Stefano, > > * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:38:45PM CET: > > Currently, the Automake-generated rebuild rules[1] invoke automake with > > some command-line options derived from arguments given to AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. > > > > [1] For more info, see: > > <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Rebuilding.html> > > > > For example, putting `foreign' in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE generates remake rules > > that rebuild outdated Makefile.in files using "$(AUTOMAKE) --foreign"; > > similarly, `no-dependencies' in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE generates remake rules > > that rebuild outdated Makefile.in files using "$(AUTOMAKE) --ignore-deps". > > I agree that this is a bug. > > Question is, does removing the arguments break other, legitimate uses? > Or was this functionality purely added at a time before automake could > trace configure.ac macros? > Well, the use of `--foreign' etc. in automake calls in rebuild rules was already in place at least in commit `Release-1-0-5-g415b068' of 10/06/1996 (back then, the option really used was the now-obsolete `--strictness=STRICTNESS-LEVEL').
Also, the use of `--ignore-deps' in automake calls in rebuild rules was added with commit `Release-1-1p-11-g27ccbf2' of 27/05/1997. At the time those commits were done, no tracing of autoconf macros nor setting of automake options in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE were available, and so the only way to enable a particular strictness and/or the option `no-dependencies' globally was to pass proper command line arguments to automake. > The tests might suffer from the trace caching bug as well, haven't > checked. > Am I missing something, or is this a quite serious bug of autom4te? Thanks, Stefano
