Re: [PATCH] {maint} distcheck: add support for AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS

[Eric Blake]

On 06/15/2011 02:18 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 06/15/2011 09:40 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>> On Tuesday 14 June 2011, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>>> * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 05:33:39PM CEST:
> 
>>> I would suggest to at least discourage using this in the documentation.
>>>
>> ... I agree, and I will make the change soon.  Maybe I can find a
>> couple of
>> examples of where the AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS could be useful *and*
>> legitimate; which would make my change more meaningful.
> 
> DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS is useful in situations when a plain
> "./configure" is not meaningful to a source tree, i.e. when a
> source-tree mandatorily requires some configuration argument.

Such a source-tree is violating GNU Coding Standards.  On the other
hand, automake strives to be useful to more than just GCS-compliant
packages.

As for a valid use of AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS, the m4 package
normally configures --without-changeword, but it is useful to have 'make
distcheck' exercise the --with-changeword option to ensure that the code
still compiles for those few people that want to enable the experimental
configure option.  m4 also uses it to stress-test --program-prefix=g
(since at one point m4 had a problem where 'make installcheck' was
assuming it could blindly test "m4" rather than the just-installed "gm4"
when that renaming option was in effect - see m4.git commit fb04a26fa).
 I've previously been using DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS for that purpose,
but like the idea of AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS better.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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