Re: distdir unset in subdir Makefiles?

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello Alexandre,

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 10:04:09AM +0200, Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote:
> >>> "DF" == David Fang <address@hidden> writes:
>  DF> I've noticed that the distdir variable in generated Makefile.in's
>  DF> only appears in the top-level Makefile.in, however, it is not set in
>  DF> subdirectories' Makefile.in's.  Is this intentional? 
> 
> Yes.  When packages are nested the subpackage doesn't know the
> distdir value, it has to be passed by the parent.

I'm afraid your answer does not answer the David's question.  Let me quote
the second paragraph:

>  DF>       In one instance, I wished to manually inspect the result of one of
>  DF> the subdirectories' "make distdir", but had to pass in these two 
> variables
>  DF> by hand, slightly inconvenient.  Is there a rationale for omitting these
>  DF> two variables in subdir's Makefile.in's?

The suggestion is that one might occassionally need to do `make distdir'
in a subdirectory of a project.  (No subpackages are involved.)

My answer was that the advantage of shortening each makefile by two
lines is bigger than the discomfort reported, because the need for
non-top `make distdir' is very rare.
(But I was not sure whether this is the right answer, so I decided to
wait for a better answer from someone else.)

Stepan Kasal