Re: [Bug-tar] GNU tar 1.19 on HP-UX

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello,

* H.Merijn Brand wrote on Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 03:43:56PM CEST:
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:28:21 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > 
> > I don't see an intrinsic advantage of `test' over `check'.
> 
> maybe because you're only testing GNU packages?

No, actually I don't.  I've cursed loudly before when installing
non-GNU software.  :-)

If Automake mandates `test' as synonymous for `check', then that
would break packages that have `test' programs as part of their
testsuite.  I have done this before in packages of my own, and I
would assume it to be rather common, even if a bit dangerous,
practice.

More generally, every target predefined by Automake poses a burden
on developers using Automake to not use this target themselves
(yes, an override of targets is possible, but the dependency
semantics still need to be retained), and neither to have in the
source tree a file or directory with that same name (this is to
avoid horrible Solaris make demons that rewrite
  if test -f file

to
  if ../../source/tree/test -f file

see the Autoconf manual for more information on this
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Automatic-Rule-Rewriting.html>).

> I'm normally only building/testing perl stuff, and we/they use 'test' as
> make test target. Far ages already. Even if I know GNU does not include
> test as a legal build target, my typical build process for GNU stuff is:
[...]
> give or take a few edits and README file readings along the way

FWIW, `make check' is documented in the generic INSTALL file.  If
you think it should be documented even more prominently, then I
would appreciate a suggestion how to do so.

I do acknowledge that other systems/packages do things differently.
However, I don't see that as a reason to emulate those other ways
in Automake.  When using Automake, to some extent you will have to
adapt to its ways anyway, it's just not that flexible, it cannot be.
And `test' doesn't increase uniformity in the Automake naming scheme.
Would you want to have `make disttest', too?  What about distcleantest,
distuninstalltest?  Please let's not go that route.

Cheers,
Ralf