Re: [PATCHES] Fix spurious Lex/Yacc-related failures in tests `silent*.test' w.r.t. Solaris XPG4 make.

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 09:10:08PM CET:
> I'm seeing this failure with Solaris XPG4 make:

> $ MAKE=/usr/xpg4/bin/make sh silentyacc.test 
> silentyacc: running bison --version
> bison (GNU Bison) 2.4.1
> Written by Robert Corbett and Richard Stallman.
[...]

> A similar failure happens with heirlom make on Debian GNU/Linux.
> 
> Also, the tests `silentlex.test' and `silent5.test' experience
> similar spurious failures with those two make implementations.
> 
> Now, these failures (which are due to the fact that those versions
> of make do not chain implicit rules) are spurious in regard to the
> being-tested "silent-rules" functionality, and easily worked around
> by adding proper explicit dependency declarations to the generated
> Makefile.am.  So I'd like to apply the attached patches to temporary
> bugfixing branches, and merge them to maint.
> 
> Objections?

Yes.  Do you expect our users to have to add the same rules (which
expose internal details, namely the object file names) to their
Makefile.am files, just so things are silent?  I don't think so.  So no,
I don't think covering up those test failures is the right way to go.
Even more, the added rules even change semantics of the build
independently of silent-rules or not; *that* is something we need to fix
in Automake proper.  I think there might even be a pending patch from
you for this.

Remember, we don't have to (and I don't want to) fix all test failures
just so that we don't see any FAILs in the logs.  If things are broken,
then it is good to see that in the logs.

Aside, again I don't see why this couldn't have been a single patch.

Thanks,
Ralf

> Subject: [PATCH] Fix spurious failure in silent5.test w.r.t. Solaris XPG4 
> make.
> 
> * tests/silent5.test (Makefile.am): Declare some dependencies
> explicitly, to cater to make implementations that don't otherwise
> chain implicit rules.  This prevents (at least) Solaris XPG4 make
> from incorrectly using its own builtin ".l -> .o" and ".y -> .o"
> rules.

> Subject: [PATCH] Fix spurious failure in silentlex.test w.r.t. Solaris XPG4 
> make.
> 
> * tests/silentlex.test (Makefile.am): Explicitly declare some
> dependencies to cater to make implementations that don't otherwise
> chain implicit rules.  This prevents (at least) Solaris XPG4 make
> from incorrectly using its own builtin .l -> .o rules.