Aside from the discussion in #8289 about alternatives to the hardwired make dvi being run by make distcheck, there seems to be another problem, namely putting a simple dvi: in a Makefile.am doesn't work to override the default rule. I get an error like this:
doc/Makefile.am:12: user target `dvi' defined here... automake: ... overrides Automake target `dvi' defined here doc/Makefile.am:12: consider using dvi-local instead of dvi Looking for the code that's enforcing this, I see in Rule.pm around line this comment: # -am targets listed in %dependencies support a -local # variant. If the user tries to override TARGET or # TARGET-am for which there exists a -local variant, # just tell the user to use it. But dvi-local does not suffice for the case at hand; that is, it can't be used to avoid rebuilding the dvi, as far as I can see. Certainly merely adding dvi-local: does nothing in particular. Is there another way? (Aside: I'm just curious, what can dvi-local actually be used for? If there's a known use for it, I suggest mentioning it in the doc.) As far as I can see, this behavior contradicts the documentation (node: Extending), which simply says: * As far as rules are concerned, a user-defined rule overrides any `automake'-defined rule for the same target. So my report is to suggest implementing that :). Perhaps there should be a warning in case of such overrides, but a fatal "you can't do that"? Else the doc should be changed. At any rate, if there's a workaround to get a clean make distcheck with a PDF-only manual with the currently released automake, we'd like to know. Thanks, Karl