Re: I: adjust test suite for upcoming GNU Make 3.83

[Stepan Kasal]

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 10, 2005 at 12:19:03PM -0400, Paul D. Smith wrote:
> The other alternative is to do away with backward compatibility and just
> say that as of release automake XXX you need GNU make 3.81 if your
> makefiles have $ in the names.

that sounds reasonable.  Perhaps there should be an AM_* macro to ensure
this, to be called in configure.ac for such projects.

But as you might have noticed, Alexandre has much more experience.
His opinion is what matters.

> The nice(?) thing about this is that
> these makefiles should also, then, work with other SysV make versions.

Do other SysV make versions support $(subst ...)?

Without it, the makefile might have to contain two copies of each
variable containing a '$' (and all variables which use this variable,
and recursively).  This won't be convenient.

And moreover, if some of the source files are substituted by configure,
you cannot fix the syntax.

> Or, you can have an automake option that selects which the user has.

I'm afraid this is not possiblle: Automake options are set by the
maintainer of the project, long before the tarball is generated.
But I guess you don't want to have different tarballs for different
make flavours.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan Kasal