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

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 03:42:01PM CEST:
> On Wednesday 18 August 2010, Roberto Bagnara wrote:
> > On 08/18/10 13:18, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > > At Wednesday 18 August 2010, Roberto Bagnara wrote:
> >  >> #$(TESTS:address@hidden@): ../../bin/compiler
> > 
> > The above is rejected even with the dot.
> This seems like an automake limitation... no big deal though, as there 
> is the simple workaround:
> 
>   TESTS_OBJS = $(TESTS:address@hidden@)
>   $(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler
> 
> which is also clearer to read IMO.

Yeah, that's just an automake parsing buglet.

> > > it's better to do:
> > >    TESTS = t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6
> > >    TESTS_OBJS = $(t1_OBJECTS) $(t2_OBJECTS) $(t3_OBJECTS) \
> > >                 $(t4_OBJECTS) $(t5_OBJECTS) $(t6_OBJECTS)
> > >    
> > >    $(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, this is more error-prone, since if you add, say,
> > > `t7' to TESTS, but forget to add $(t7_OBJECTS) to TESTS_OBJS,
> > > you'll have missing dependencies...  Well, you'll decide what's
> > > better for you.
> > 
> > Hmm, it is error-prone indeed.  Moreover, we have more than one
> > thousands tests and we could soon have two thousands of them.

I suppose automake could be enhanced to also define $(OBJECTS) as the
set of all objects.

But there are other ways you could hack around this.  Iff your compiler
is generated from a different Makefile.am (this is important!), then in
the tests/Makefile.am you could:

BUILT_SOURCES = stamp-objects
stamp-objects: ../../bin/compiler
        -rm -f *.$(OBJEXT)
        -rm -f sub/*.$(OBJEXT)
        ...
        echo timestamp >$@

It is rather hacky, but it should work.  Untested.

Cheers,
Ralf