Re: Splitting "make check" into separate build and run targets

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 11/19/2012 01:03 PM, Björn Stenberg wrote:
> Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>> You could add a dummy dependency for these missing sources, so that make
>> won't try to rebuild them (and fail, because there are no rules to do so):
> 
> Yay, that is a neat workaround which I hadn't seen before.
> 
> However, this requires me to create a custom input for each package
> (and potentially each version). That is a maintenance burden similar
> to patching every package.
> 
> In contrast, updating check.am to split check into build/run is
> forward and backward compatible and doesn't have to be adapted to
> changes in the test suites.
> 
> Is there a downside I'm not seeing?
> 
First, a smaller nit:

-check-TESTS: $(TESTS)
+AM_RECURSIVE_TARGETS += buildtest runtest
+
+buildtest-TESTS: $(TESTS)
+
+check-TESTS: buildtest-TESTS
+             $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) runtest-TESTS
+
+runtest-TESTS:
        @failed=0; all=0; xfail=0; xpass=0; skip=0; \

With this, you force an extra recursive make invocation over every
user.  Now that we are suggesting to move towards non-recursive make
setups, this kind of changes is deprecated, and definitely unfit for
the Automake's core.

In addition, and more to the point, the serial testsuite driver is
deprecated, and kept in maintenance-mode only.  If you want your
change to be integrated into Automake, I suggest you aim for the
parallel testsuite.  But I'm not sure that the semantic you want
will be as easy to implement there as it was for the serial tests.

Regards,
  Stefano