automake-1.7.4 generates suspicious Makefile.in

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

here is a case where automake 1.7.4 generates a Makefile.in that contains
a lone line starting with a tab (i.e. a command line outside of any target
rule). It's not clear to me whether such a Makefile is valid; but it's
suspicious enough that I stay with automake 1.7.3 for the moment.

========================= Makefile.am ========================
noinst_PROGRAMS = hostname
include_HEADERS = gettext-po.h
BUILT_SOURCES = po-hash-gen.c
========================= configure.ac =======================
AC_PREREQ(2.57)
AC_INIT
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(gettext-tools, 0.12)
AC_PROG_CC
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT
==============================================================

$ aclocal
$ autoconf
$ automake --foreign
configure.ac: required file `../mkinstalldirs' not found
configure.ac: required file `../missing' not found
Makefile.am: required file `../depcomp' not found

Now look at the Makefile.in, between installdirs and install:

======================= .... =======================

installdirs:
        $(mkinstalldirs) $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)

        $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) install-recursive

install: $(BUILT_SOURCES)
        $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) install-am
======================= .... =======================

Here is the relevant config:

$ aclocal --version
aclocal (GNU automake) 1.7.4
$ autoconf --version
autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.57
$ automake --version
automake (GNU automake) 1.7.4
$ m4 --version
GNU m4 1.4o
$ perl --version
This is perl, v5.8.0 built for i586-linux-thread-multi

It looks like the culprit is the 2003-04-06 modification.

Bruno