Re: VPATH test failure

[Eric Blake]

On 08/24/2010 08:08 AM, Patrick Welche wrote:
> Highlight (NetBSD-current/i386, autoconf head) is:
>
> ./torture.at:1223: cd $dir&&  $MAKE
> stderr:
> make: don't know how to make w. Stop
> stdout:

This output is not from GNU make.  VPATH builds with other makes are 
likely to trigger bugs in those make implementations, which is why the 
INSTALL file included with autoconf is explicit that for most GNU 
packages, VPATH builds are only supported with GNU make.  However, the 
whole point of test 240 (VPATH) is to prove that autoconf itself is not 
getting in the way of other packages that do try to be portable to VPATH 
on other make implementations.

Therefore, however, it would be nice to get to the bottom of this, and 
figure out if it is a bug in BSD make or in the autoconf testsuite; if 
the former, whether it is something that we can still manage to work 
around; and if the latter, what we did wrong in the testsuite.

> quartz% pwd
> /usr/src/local/autoconf/tests/testsuite.dir/240
> quartz% grep -rw w *
> autom4te.cache/output.0:  if test -w "$cache_file"; then
> configure:  if test -w "$cache_file"; then
> testsuite.log:make: don't know how to make w. Stop
>
>
> So where does the "w" come from?

Do you have $MAKE set in your environment?  Does './run -v -x' in that 
directory provide any more insight, such as what $MAKE expanded to in 
the failing command?

--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org