Re: Testing a new compiler with Automake "simple tests"

[Roberto Bagnara]

On 08/17/2010 08:47 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 02:26:13PM CEST:
> > At Tuesday 17 August 2010, Roberto Bagnara wrote:
> > > On 08/17/10 13:26, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > > >     $(TESTS): your-special-purpose-compiler
> > >
> > > That dependency cases relinking whenever the compiler
> > > changes, whereas I need recompilation.
> > Obviously you're right, sorry for not thinking this through.
> > If every test program is built from a single `.c' file, what
> > about using this instead:
> >    $(TESTS:=.o) your-special-purpose-compiler
> > It should also be portable make AFAIK.
>
> This doesn't take into account that object file names are an internal
> detail of Automake.  In practice, they might end in .obj, as Stefano
> already noted, which $(OBJEXT) or @OBJEXT@ can tell you, but also,
> object files may be renamed due to one of several reasons such as
> per-target flags, (obsolete) KnR support, and others.
>
> I'm mentioning @OBJEXT@ because
>    $(TESTS:=$(OBJEXT)): compiler
>
> is not portable to some make implementations, while
>    $(TESTS:address@hidden@): compiler
>
> is.  Also, if your tests contain scripts as well,
>    $(check_PROGRAMS:address@hidden@): compiler
>
> or EXTRA_PROGRAMS may be more correct.

Dear Stefano and Ralf,

thank you very much for your assistance.  I am a bit
confused; here is what I have in my Makefile.am

# This does not work: Automake 1.11 rejects it with
#   Makefile.am:1148: bad characters in variable name `$(TESTS'
#$(TESTS:address@hidden@): ../../bin/compiler

# This does not work: when ../../bin/compiler changes, tests are not recompiled.
#TESTS_OBJS = $(TESTS:address@hidden@)
#$(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler

# This works (but is nonportable and has several other problems).
TESTS_OBJS = $(TESTS:=.o)
$(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler

I am sure I am missing something obvious...
All the best,

   Roberto

--
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Applied Formal Methods Laboratory
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:address@hidden