Re: makefile improvements

[John Darrington]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 09:36:21PM -0700, Ben Pfaff wrote:
     I created a branch with improvements to the PSPP makefiles, named
     "makefiles".  I'd appreciate it if you'd look it over and make
     comments before I merge anything into master.

1.
   po_CLEAN:
        @if test "$(srcdir)" != .; then \
                echo rm -f $(POFILES); \
                rm -f $(POFILES); \
        fi

In principle this is fine, but I'm not sure that the test is very reliable.
For example if the curreent directory is /home/john and srcdir is "/home/john" 
or "../john" then it'll give the wrong result.  There are several other places
in the makefiles where a similar trick is used.  Perhaps we should do the
test in configure, and define a conditional ??




2.
  $(POFILES): $(POTFILE)
        $(MSGMERGE) $(top_srcdir)/$@ $(top_srcdir)/$(POTFILE) -o $@

$(POTFILE) is a generated file, so it will be in $(top_builddir) not 
$(top_srcdir).



3.
  The $(VARIABLE) syntax is usually preferred, because it is possible for 
  the user to override it at "make" time, whereas @VARIABLE@ is hardwired at 
  "configure" time.

I'm in two minds about whether this is an advantage or not.


J'

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