Re: [PATCH] Automake support for ObjC++

[Peter Breitenlohner]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> > This new version requires autoconf-2.64 (otherwise aclocal fails) and
> > defines AM_PROG_OBJCXX.  A hook for AC_PROG_OBJCXX, eventually to be defined
> > by Autoconf, is already in place.
>
> Would you be so nice as to respin and simplify the patch under the
> assumption that AC_PROG_OBJCXX exists?  I think it should be sufficient
> to just require new enough Autoconf for this to work, that way we can
> avoid all the duplication and so on.  This patch is targets 1.12 rather
> than 1.11.1 anyway.  Maybe it can even omit the objcxx.m4 file
> completely?

OK, I will leave out all the AM_PROG_OBJCXX stuff and pretend that
AC_PROG_OBJCXX exists.  However, as long as Autoconf doesn't provide it,
we'll need the objcxx.m4 file to provide AC_PROG_OBJCXX; otherwise how could
one do any tests.

> The other thing I'd like to see either in this patch or in a followup
> one is your play-1.1 test rewritten as an Automake testsuite addition,
> so that we have one full build test (including distcheck).  (I can do
> that if you don't want to.)
>
> (I think a similar note applies to the configure.ac part of play-1.0 and
> the Autoconf testsuite.  If you have any issues with this, or don't want
> to do the work, ping me and I'll look into it.)

What precisely did you have in mind? I suppose just a somewhat cleaned up
version of my old tarball(s), such that you can use them in an Automake
testsuite addition.  I'll do that it may take a little time (few weeks).

=================

Two completely unrelated items:

(1) I noticed that 'make uninstallcheck' does test for leftover installed
files but not for symlinks (same for distcleancheck).  I stumbled onto this
because I had some symlinks installed via install-exec-hook but (due to a
typo) not uninstalled via uninstall-hook; to my surprise this was never
reported by distcheck.

I suppose this is a bug and the fix is extremely trivial.  Shall I send a
separate report with patch or can you simply modify the definition of both
distuninstallcheck_listfiles and distcleancheck_listfiles into
        'find . -type f -o -type l -print'
plus appropriate corrections to the manual?

(2) The manual says that INCLUDES does the same job as AM_CPPFLAGS (or any
per-target _CPPFLAGS' variable if it is used), and is an older name for the
same functionality, and that INCLUDES is deprecated.

The first part is more or less true. However, I wish that INCLUDES were not
deprecated because it is sometimes convenient to use both, as e.g.,
        INCLUDES = -Isome_dir           # common flags
        AM_CPPFLAGS = -UPROG            # additional flags (default)
        prog1_CPPFLAGS = -Dprog1        # additional flags for prog1
        prog2_CPPFLAGS = -Dprog2        # additional flags for prog2
Of course, one could rewrite this as
        includes = -Isome_dir
        AM_CPPFLAGS = $(includes) -UPROG
        prog1_CPPFLAGS = $(includes) -Dprog1
        prog2_CPPFLAGS = $(includes) -Dprog2
but why drop some (at least marginally) useful functionality.

=================

Regards
Peter Breitenlohner <address@hidden>