Re: [Bug-tar] GNU tar 1.19 on HP-UX

[H.Merijn Brand]

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:50:26 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden>
wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> * H.Merijn Brand wrote on Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 03:43:56PM CEST:
> > On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:28:21 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > 
> > > I don't see an intrinsic advantage of `test' over `check'.
> > 
> > maybe because you're only testing GNU packages?
> 
> No, actually I don't.  I've cursed loudly before when installing
> non-GNU software.  :-)
> 
> If Automake mandates `test' as synonymous for `check', then that
> would break packages that have `test' programs as part of their
> testsuite.  I have done this before in packages of my own, and I
> would assume it to be rather common, even if a bit dangerous,
> practice.

I'll stop nagging, and will just conclude with my opinion that
choosing check as a test target was very very wrong to begin with.

> More generally, every target predefined by Automake poses a burden
> on developers using Automake to not use this target themselves
> (yes, an override of targets is possible, but the dependency
> semantics still need to be retained), and neither to have in the
> source tree a file or directory with that same name (this is to
> avoid horrible Solaris make demons that rewrite
>   if test -f file
> 
> to
>   if ../../source/tree/test -f file

I was having a look at the Makefile stuff in coreutils and wondered
how sure they are that the 'test' calls in the make environment are
not the one they've just build. There are quite a few people that
include '.' in their $PATH upfront.

> see the Autoconf manual for more information on this
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Automatic-Rule-Rewriting.html>).
> 
> > I'm normally only building/testing perl stuff, and we/they use 'test' as
> > make test target. Far ages already. Even if I know GNU does not include
> > test as a legal build target, my typical build process for GNU stuff is:
> [...]
> > give or take a few edits and README file readings along the way
> 
> FWIW, `make check' is documented in the generic INSTALL file.  If
> you think it should be documented even more prominently, then I
> would appreciate a suggestion how to do so.

No, don't change the docs. I *know* that GNU always uses make check.
I don't have to find out, I just always use make test. I'm too much
used to it to think about the `other' target.

> I do acknowledge that other systems/packages do things differently.
> However, I don't see that as a reason to emulate those other ways
> in Automake.  When using Automake, to some extent you will have to
> adapt to its ways anyway, it's just not that flexible, it cannot be.
> And `test' doesn't increase uniformity in the Automake naming scheme.
> Would you want to have `make disttest', too?  What about distcleantest,
> distuninstalltest?  Please let's not go that route.

No, I'll just try to see if I can invent some evil scheme to make
$CONFIG_SITE, being a shell script, alter all the Makefile* in the
tree like

   # find . -name 'Makefile*' |\
     xargs perl -pi -e's/^check:/test check:/'

and there was no more cursing :)

-- 
H.Merijn Brand         Amsterdam Perl Mongers (http://amsterdam.pm.org/)
using & porting perl 5.6.2, 5.8.x, 5.10.x  on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, 11.11,
& 11.23, SuSE 10.1 & 10.2, AIX 5.2, and Cygwin.       http://qa.perl.org
http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/            http://www.test-smoke.org
                        http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/