Re: distcheck does 'chmod a-w' - leads to mkdir "permission denied"

[Nick Bowler]

Hi,

On 3/3/17, Paul Jakma <address@hidden> wrote:
> My make distcheck is broken and I can't figure out how to fix it or
> where the problem lies.
[...]
> chmod -R a-w quagga-1.2.0
> chmod u+w quagga-1.2.0
> mkdir quagga-1.2.0/_build quagga-1.2.0/_build/sub quagga-1.2.0/_inst
> chmod a-w quagga-1.2.0
> test -d quagga-1.2.0/_build || exit 0; \
[...]
> Making all in doc
> make[3]: Entering directory
> '/home/paul/code/quagga/quagga-1.2.0/_build/sub/doc'
> make  all-am
> make[4]: Entering directory
> '/home/paul/code/quagga/quagga-1.2.0/_build/sub/doc'
>    MAKEINFO ../../../doc/quagga.info
> mkdir: cannot create directory ‘.am18743’: Permission denied

One of the things 'make distcheck' tests it that it can run builds from a
read-only source tree.  That is, remove all write permissions from the
unpacked tarball, then perform build actions (at the same time, it is
doing a VPATH build).

This includes running 'make dist' from such a source tree.

It looks to me like you have a problem where some build rule is trying
to write to srcdir (this is a common way to write rules when distributing
generated files) This probably means you have a timestamp problem in
your distribution tarball (e.g., some distributed files are older than
their source files).

Expected behaviour on a freshly unpacked tarball is that all such
generated files are up to date, and therefore no build rules will
attempt to update them.

Cheers,
  Nick