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Re: Copy files in VPATH build


From: Ralf Wildenhues
Subject: Re: Copy files in VPATH build
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 10:20:47 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2010-08-04)

* Paul J. Davis wrote on Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 12:10:01AM CEST:
> On Oct 30, 2010, at 5:17 PM, Jason Curl <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 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:

Right.  If @srcdir@ is '.', then GNU make will error out here
(non-GNU make would destroy your data, except that it will barf over the
use of $< outside of inference rules first).

> > 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.

Correct as well.

> 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.

Good idea.

An alternative can be to use AC_CONFIG_LINKS with identical source and
target name for files: the link-or-copy will the only be made if in a
VPATH build.  You need Autoconf >= 2.62 and Automake >= 1.11 for this to
work correctly (please set AC_PREREQ and Automake Option to this end,
because the older versions had bugs that could cause source file
removal.)  Please report any remaining bugs.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf



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