Re: Splitting "make check" into separate build and run targets

[Björn Stenberg]

Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> First, a smaller nit:
> 
> -check-TESTS: $(TESTS)
> +AM_RECURSIVE_TARGETS += buildtest runtest
> +
> +buildtest-TESTS: $(TESTS)
> +
> +check-TESTS: buildtest-TESTS
> +             $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) runtest-TESTS
> +
> +runtest-TESTS:
>         @failed=0; all=0; xfail=0; xpass=0; skip=0; \
> 
> With this, you force an extra recursive make invocation over every
> user.  Now that we are suggesting to move towards non-recursive make
> setups, this kind of changes is deprecated, and definitely unfit for
> the Automake's core.

I am not aware of another way to specify sequential dependencies to a target. 
We could set runtest-TESTS as a second dependency for check-TESTS, but that 
would break with "make -j".

Do you have a suggestion?

> In addition, and more to the point, the serial testsuite driver is
> deprecated, and kept in maintenance-mode only.  If you want your
> change to be integrated into Automake, I suggest you aim for the
> parallel testsuite.  But I'm not sure that the semantic you want
> will be as easy to implement there as it was for the serial tests.

Unfortunately, I need this split in the serial driver too. I am working on 
packaging the test suites of all packages in a whole linux distribution, a 
significant percentage of which use the serial testsuite driver. Rewriting all 
test suites to use the parallel driver is just not feasible.

-- 
Björn