site.exp (Was: Re: FYI: depout.m4 adjustment for post-processed Makefile.ins)

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

 >>>>>> "adl" == Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:
 adl> - Debian Bug#144221: dejagnu.am build site.exp and site.bak, and never
 adl> erase these files.  Hence `make distcheck' always fails. 

Actually it seems it's worse than that: `site.exp' might already
exists and contains user variables.  In this case `site.exp' is
distributed, and the `site.exp' rule generates only a portion of
this file.  

So cleaning this file in distcheck is ok only if it's not
distributed, otherwise you lose some user settings.

Now let's assume `site.exp' is distributed and look at this rule:

site.exp: Makefile
        @echo 'Making a new site.exp file...'
        @echo '## these variables are automatically generated by make ##' 
>site.tmp
        @echo '# Do not edit here.  If you wish to override these values' 
>>site.tmp
        @echo '# edit the last section' >>site.tmp
        @echo 'set tool $(DEJATOOL)' >>site.tmp
        @echo 'set srcdir $(srcdir)' >>site.tmp
        @echo "set objdir `pwd`" >>site.tmp
[...]
        @echo '## All variables above are generated by configure. Do Not Edit 
##' >>site.tmp
        @test ! -f site.exp || \
          sed '1,/^## All variables above are.*##/ d' site.exp >> site.tmp
        @-rm -f site.bak
        @test ! -f site.exp || mv site.exp site.bak
        @mv site.tmp site.exp

First it's clear that it won't work in VPATH configurations,
were the original `site.exp' lies in `$(srcdir)'.  (This is
part of Debian bug #144918)

Then, because site.exp depends on Makefile, this is another
instance of the issue discussed in bug-automake@ a few days ago:

<< distributed files dependent upon built files >>

Here site.exp is distributed and depend upon Makefile.  So it is
always rebuilt, so `make distcheck' always fails.  (This *is*
Debian bug #144221 -- my summary was just wrong.)

-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz