Re: PATCH for "make distcheck" failure

[Richard Boulton]

On Wed, 2002-08-21 at 16:28, Bruce Korb wrote:
> > >> Why don't you simply use DIST_SUBDIRS?
> 
> >  Bruce> 2.  Even now that I've read it, using it would mean taking over
> >  Bruce> an automatable chore from automake.
> > 
> > I don't get this.  Which chore should be automated?
> 
> Maintaining the contents of DIST_SUBDIRS.  If I make an assignment
> to it, then I am responsible for its contents.  I wish to leave it
> up to the automake system.

This should be possible.  However, automake has problems calculating
DIST_SUBDIRS if you use autoconf substitutions in SUBDIRS, because it
doesn't know what the possible values that autoconf is going to
substitute are.  Use conditional automake variables instead - then
automake will be able to calculate the correct value for DIST_SUBDIRS by
taking all possible values for SUBDIRS.

So:

if BAR
  MAYBE_BAR = bar
fi
SUBDIRS = foo $(MAYBE_BAR)

DIST_SUBDIRS is automatically calculated as "foo bar"
bar/Makefile.in should always be configured (though it may not be used
in particular configurations): so put it in AC_CONFIG_FILES together
with Makefile.in and foo/Makefile.in.

I'm not sure why you would get conflicts from this: I've done exactly
the above (well, different filenames) several times with no problems.

-- 
Richard