Re: Inconsistent VPATH behavior ..

[Harsha Kalidindi]

Paul:

> VPATH is useful only to find source files from the destination
> directory, it cannot be used to find destination files from the source
> directory.
>
> I think that's what your trying to do here: run make in the source
> directory and put the results in a different directory.  VPATH cannot be
> used in that environment.
>
> You might take a look at my web site below: there's an in-depth
> discussion of how VPATH works (and doesn't).

        We are setting VPATH to only look for source files but gmake is 
attaching the target directory (which is a relative path) to the VPATH and 
satisfies itself as to the fulfillment of the target. I think the only way 
I can clearly explain this is by giving you the scenario I sent you before:

        /user/p/src has the makefile and sources.
        /user/p/install has the install tree.


        /user/u/src has the makefile and sources.
        /user/u/install has the install tree.


        The GNUmakefile in the src tree has VPATH set to /user/p/src to 
only look for sources.

        ../install/scripts/% : %
                $(INSTALL) -m 444 $(<) $(@)

        is the rule.


        If the install tree in /user/u/install has not yet been created 
(that is the rule has not been run even once). gmake -d shows that it 
actually looks at $(VPATH)/../install/scripts and compares the dates with 
/user/u/src. If /user/u/install does exist then it first compares the dates 
between them and /user/u/src.

        gmake is looking in $(VPATH)/../install/scripts. We are not 
expecting it to. We expect it to look in VPATH only for sources when they 
don't exist in the current source tree ..


Regards,
Harsha

address@hidden 212.762.4165

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