Re: Copy files in VPATH build

[Paul J. Davis]

On Oct 30, 2010, at 5:17 PM, Jason Curl <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> When building my package with "./configure" everything works well as some 
> datafiles that are required for tests are in the correct place (my tests 
> don't need to be installed with "make install"). However, when I use VPATH 
> builds with "../configure", I don't know how to get my data files copied from 
> the source to the current build path.
> 
> I've just read up on VPATH, and I think gmake is assuming, that while the 
> datafiles are in the source, the dependencies are satisfied, even though they 
> aren't in the build directory.
> 
> The following rules don't work:
> test.ini: @srcdir@/test.ini
>  cp $< $@
> 
> ./test.ini: @srcdir@/test.ini
>  cp $< $@
> 
> But the rule:
> test2.ini: @srcdir@/test.ini
>  cp $< $@
> 
> does work, but I don't need to rename the file in the copy, and when not 
> using VPATH, it just performs a useless copy.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Regards,
> Jason.
> 

Jason,

The only thing I've way I've overcome this is to have a test runner that gets 
built by configure so it can have access to both the build and source directory 
paths.

Although, this means you still have to know wither every file is built or not.

If you find something cleaner I'd definitely be interested in hearing about it.

Paul Davis