Re: converting to subdir-objects

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 8 Mar 2015, Harlan Stenn wrote:

> 'make dist' and 'make distcheck' have been working fine for a Very Long
> Time in this project.
>
> In my attempt to get subdir-objects working NTP, I added
> "subdir-objects" to the list of options in the AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE line in
> its configure.ac file.  I figured I'd add that option, run autoreconf,
> 'make', and see what happened.

I had the perhaps mistaken impression (due to the mention of "old 
style" build tree") that you are migrating to a non-recursive build.

The Automake manual is pretty clear about expectations for 'make dist'

https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#Dist

Particularly the statement:

"Note that when packages are nested using AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS (see 
Subpackages), then ‘$(distdir)’ and ‘$(top_distdir)’ are relative to 
the package where ‘make dist’ was run, not to any sub-packages 
involved. "

If one has a non-recursive build then there is just one Makefile 
although a whole build system might be a mix of recursive and 
non-recursive methodologies.  In a non-resursive build, subordinate 
Makefile's are responsible for copying the files they are responsible 
for into the distribution.

It seems to me that strategies which are not compatible with 
Automake's own 'make dist' are not likely to work reliably.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/