Re: [PATCH v2 0/9] Patches to avoid use of make recursion in the 'src/' subdir

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 08/31/2012 09:59 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> ...
>>> No problem.
>>> Next step, "make distcheck".  First failure is because inclusion of
>>> version.h fails in the non-srcdir build:
>> ...
>>> This fixes it:
>>>
>>> diff --git a/src/local.mk b/src/local.mk
>>
>> FYI, here's another make distcheck problem,
>> in case someone else can get to it before I do
>> (it'll soon be dinner time here):
>>
>>   make[2]: Entering directory 
>> `/h/j/w/co/cu/coreutils-8.19.68-ea804-dirty/_build'
>>     CC       src/uname-arch.o
>>     CC       src/hostname.o
>>     CCLD     src/arch
>>     CCLD     src/hostname
>>     GEN      man/arch.1
>>     GEN      man/hostname.1
>>   mkdir: cannot create directory 'man/arch.td': No such file or directory
>>   make[2]: *** [man/arch.1] Error 1
>>   make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
>>   mkdir: cannot create directory 'man/hostname.td': No such file or directory
>>   make[2]: *** [man/hostname.1] Error 1
>>   make[2]: Leaving directory 
>> `/h/j/w/co/cu/coreutils-8.19.68-ea804-dirty/_build'
>>   make[1]: *** [dist] Error 2
>>   make[1]: Leaving directory 
>> `/h/j/w/co/cu/coreutils-8.19.68-ea804-dirty/_build'
>>   make: *** [distcheck] Error 1
> 
> The fix for this is to create man and src directories:
> 
> diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
> index 8c41d62..5dc4b0a 100644
> --- a/configure.ac
> +++ b/configure.ac
> @@ -464,6 +464,11 @@ AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.18.1])
>  # For a test of uniq: it uses the $LOCALE_FR envvar.
>  gt_LOCALE_FR
> 
> +# Now that configure no longer creates src/ or man/, create them here.
> +# Doing it this way is more maintainable that adding to each individual
> +# Makefile rule that creates a file in one of those sub-directories.
> +$MKDIR_P man src
> +
To be extra-purist, shouldn't this be handled with dirstamp rules in the
Makefile?  Or maybe, such a purist move could be done at least in the
Automake-NG based fork of coreutils, where we can use GNU make order-only
prerequisites, which will DTRT in this context.

Thanks,
  Stefano