Re: FYI: tests depends on ./defs

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

Hi Raja!

>>> "Raja" == Raja R Harinath <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

 >> +$(TESTS): defs

 Raja> I'd prefer

 Raja> check_SCRIPTS = defs

 Raja> as a somewhat cleaner way of expressing this.

You didn't say why :)

I'm not overly fond of hiding dependencies to make: the more
make knows about dependencies, the more reliable the build is.

For instance consider people running test cases with
  make TESTS='foo.test bar.test' check-TESTS
That's not an uncommon invocation when your make implementation
doesn't forward macro assignments to sub-make.  (Granted,
  env TESTS='foo.test bar.test' SHELL=/bin/sh make -e check
is certainly a more general solution.)


Hmmm... I'm just realizing that (*_SOURCES variables omitted):

   check_PROGRAMS = foo
   check_LIBRARIES = libbar.a
   TESTS = bar.test foo.test

would be more accurately written with additional dependencies

   check_PROGRAMS = foo
   check_LIBRARIES = libbar.a
   TESTS = bar.test foo.test
   foo.test: foo
   bar.test: libbar.a

which in turn could be written as 

   EXTRA_PROGRAMS = foo
   EXTRA_LIBRARIES = libbar.a
   TESTS = bar.test foo.test
   foo.test: foo
   bar.test: libbar.a

with the added benefit that `foo' and `libbar.a' can be built in
parallel.  (This parallelization is impossible with the check_
targets which are run serially.)  Seems like I will update a few
Makefile.ams of mine :)
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz