Re: Testing a new compiler with Automake "simple tests"

[Roberto Bagnara]

On 08/18/10 13:18, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> At Wednesday 18 August 2010, Roberto Bagnara wrote:
> > # This does not work: when ../../bin/compiler changes, tests are
> > # not recompiled.
> > # TESTS_OBJS = $(TESTS:address@hidden@)
> Typo here (and in Ralf example): should be $(TESTS:address@hidden@),
> with a dot `.' before @OBJEXT@ (this is because @OBJEXT@ do not
> contain a leading dot: it's either `o' or `obj').

Ah, right.

>> # This does not work: Automake 1.11 rejects it with
>> #   Makefile.am:1148: bad characters in variable name `$(TESTS'
>> #$(TESTS:address@hidden@): ../../bin/compiler

The above is rejected even with the dot.

> That said, you should consider Ralf's suggestion to use the
> $(*_OBJECTS) variables instead, for more correctness.  In fact,
> as Ralf pointed out in a previous message:
>
>   " ... this doesn't take into account that object file names are
>     an internal detail of Automake.  In practice, they might end
>     in .obj, as Stefano already noted, which $(OBJEXT) or @OBJEXT@
>     can tell you, but also, object files may be renamed due to
>     one of several reasons such as per-target flags, (obsolete)
>     K&R support, and others. "
>
> So, instead of doing simply e.g.:
>
>    TESTS = t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6
>    TESTS_OBJS = $(TESTS:address@hidden@)
>    $(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler
>
> it's better to do:
>
>    TESTS = t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6
>    TESTS_OBJS = $(t1_OBJECTS) $(t2_OBJECTS) $(t3_OBJECTS) \
>                 $(t4_OBJECTS) $(t5_OBJECTS) $(t6_OBJECTS)
>    $(TESTS_OBJS): ../../bin/compiler
>
> Unfortunately, this is more error-prone, since if you add, say, `t7'
> to TESTS, but forget to add $(t7_OBJECTS) to TESTS_OBJS, you'll have
> missing dependencies...  Well, you'll decide what's better for you.

Hmm, it is error-prone indeed.  Moreover, we have more than one
thousands tests and we could soon have two thousands of them.
Said that, I will probably use this solution.

For the long term, given that the problem I am facing seems rather
general (testing compilers or compiler-like tools), would you consider
the possibility to extend Automate to simplify the job?
Thanks again,

   Roberto

--
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Applied Formal Methods Laboratory
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:address@hidden