Reference: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=18286
On 08/18/2014 02:30 AM, Peter Johansson wrote:
Hi, I have this snippet in my 'Makefile.am' include am/test_data.am $(srcdir)/am/test_data.am: $(srcdir)/test/data.txt $(srcdir)/am/test_data.am.in cd $(srcdir) && $(SHELL) bootstrap am/test_data.am It first includes (at Automake time) a snippet, which is generated while bootstrapping. Now I forgot to include $(srcdir)/test/data.txt $(srcdir)/am/test_data.am.in in the distball, which caused the embarrassing make: *** No rule to make target `am/test_data.am.in', needed by `am/test_data.am'. Stop. The surprising thing is that distcheck does not detect this problem,
> but 'make distcheck' passes through without problem. > This issue has been reported already in the past: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2006-09/msg00008.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2013-01/msg00049.html (BTW, sorry Nicola for missing your report and your fix for so long!)
The reason for
> this is probably because while $(srcdir)/test/data.txt does not exist, > make also looks in $(srcdir)/$(srcdir)/test/data.txt and that file exists > as it is part of my development directory. If I change my Makefile.am to
$(srcdir)/am/test_data.am: test/data.txt am/test_data.am.in cd $(srcdir) && $(SHELL) bootstrap am/test_data.am 'make distcheck' will detect the problem, but I have this habit of type
> $(srcdir) for things that are supposed to be in $(srcdir). Is that a bad > habit?
It can sometimes lead to strange interactions, if not used consistently; see http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2006-09/msg00008.html and follow-up messages. But the issue you are experiencing is not due to that, but rather to a bug/limitation of the current 'distcheck' implementation.
A fix could be to let distcheck not work in $(distdir) but instead create
> 'tmp_/$(distdir)', builddir 'tmp_/$(distdir)/build_', and installdir > 'tmp_/$(distdir)/inst_' which would hide the development files from the > distcheck. >
What do you think?
Seems like a viable plan. In such a setup, relatively to $(builddir), $(srcdir) will be '..', while the "developement" copy of the source tree will be in '../..'; so the incomplete tarball should be diagnosed. Definitely a nice fix to have for Automake 1.15... Let's see if I can make it happen.