Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> writes: > Simon Josefsson wrote: >> I'm seeing some syntax-check warnings like this: >> >> lib/Makefile.am:623: DEFS = -DLOCALEDIR=\"$(localedir)\" @DEFS@ >> src/Makefile.am:716: DEFS = -DLOCALEDIR=\"$(localedir)\" @DEFS@ >> maint.mk: use $(...), not @...@ >> make: *** [sc_makefile_at_at_check] Error 1 >> >> However the gettext 0.18.1 manual still recommends using the lines used >> above. Should the gettext manual be updated, or are there valid >> situations when @....@ is appropriate that maint.mk could detect? > > If the maintainer was to write > > DEFS = -DLOCALEDIR=\"$(localedir)\" $(DEFS) > > it would be a circular definition, leading to this error with GNU make: > > Makefile:1: *** Recursive variable `DEFS' references itself > (eventually). Stop. > > So the use of @...@ is not only appropriate here, it is even mandatory.
So possibly the maint.mk check should be relaxed to permit constructs matching FOO = ... @FOO@ then? > Note that for packages that use a hand-written Makefile.am (as opposed to a > hand-written Makefile.in), the gettext documentation [1] suggests to augment > AM_CPPFLAGS instead of DEFS. Both work, AM_CPPFLAGS is just more modern style. Ah, I had missed this in some projects -- changing it to use AM_CPPFLAGS instead also makes the warning go away and seems simple. Then I think the current behaviour of maint.mk shoudld stay, unless anyone else finds other corner cases -- this warning resulted a change to use a more modern style in one of my projects. /Simon
