Re: test/Makefile.am: required file `gnuscripts/compile' not found

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Adam Mercer wrote on Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 12:24:45AM CET:
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 22:17, Adam Mercer <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Just made this change and autoreconf no longer complains if compile
> > isn't available. Thanks!
> 
> And it's started complaining again :-(
> 
> I've tried running automake manually, with the verbose option:
[...]
> automake: reading /usr/share/automake-1.9/am/program.am
> test/Makefile.am: required file `gnuscripts/compile' not found
> automake: reading /usr/share/automake-1.9/am/compile.am
[...]
> 
> and comparing it to the output with using a locally installed
> automake-1.11.1 (with autoconf-2.65) I get:
> 
> automake: thread 0: reading test/Makefile.am
> automake: thread 0: reading
> /home/ram/opt/autotools/share/automake-1.11/am/progs.am
> automake: thread 0: reading
> /home/ram/opt/autotools/share/automake-1.11/am/program.am
> automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .c become .o
> automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .c become .obj
> automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .c become .lo
> automake: thread 0: reading
> /home/ram/opt/autotools/share/automake-1.11/am/check.am
> automake: thread 0: creating ./test/Makefile.in
> 
> Could this be just running into problems with the older autotools?

Yes.  Automake 1.9.6 was less precise in figuring out when the compile
script would be needed, so it ended up requiring it in more cases.

> If so is there anything I can do?

> The reason I'm concerned about this is that I usually do all my
> development from my laptop (running Snow Leopard) and then update the
> build scripts with "autoreconf -fvi" and having to manually add the
> compile script will lead to problems as no doubt I will forget and
> then the build system will be comprised of scripts from differing
> versions (which has led to problems in the past).

It should work to always use the newest versions of the helper scripts
even with older autotools versions (and if it doesn't, please report to
bug-automake); so one thing you could do is, after autoreconf -fvi, copy
the compile script manually and run automake again.

> We are pretty much stuck with the standard CentOS versions of the
> autotools (autoconf-2.59 and automake-1.9.6) so updating is
> unfortunately not really an option (I would really like to as I want
> to use features present in automake-1.10+ and can't).

That's too bad.  Even more so since there is a security vulnerability in
Automake 1.9.6 'dist' and 'distcheck' rules that your vendor should fix.

Cheers,
Ralf