Incorrect directory creation with 'make dist' and EXTRA_DIST

[Sander Niemeijer]

Hi all,

I think I have found a bug in automake.

Attached is an example that reproduces the problem.

The problem is triggered by configuring the foo-1.0 package using a  
full path to configure (or to use a build directory that differs from  
the source directory) and running a 'make dist'.

If I do e.g.

$ tar -zxf foo-1.0.tar.gz
$ cd foo-1.0
$ /Users/sander/foo-1.0/configure
$ make dist

I will end up with an empty directory 'Users/sander/foo-1.0/data' in  
my newly created foo-1.0 package.

The problem seems to come from the creation of directories for each  
of the EXTRA_DIST entries.
From Makefile.in:
---
distdir: $(DISTFILES)
        $(am__remove_distdir)
        mkdir $(distdir)
--->    $(mkdir_p) $(distdir)/$(top_srcdir)/data
        @srcdirstrip=`echo "$(srcdir)" | sed 's|.|.|g'`; \
        topsrcdirstrip=`echo "$(top_srcdir)" | sed 's|.|.|g'`; \
        list='$(DISTFILES)'; for file in $$list; do \
          case $$file in \
            $(srcdir)/*) file=`echo "$$file" | sed "s|^$ 
$srcdirstrip/||"`;; \
            $(top_srcdir)/*) file=`echo "$$file" | sed "s|^$ 
$topsrcdirstrip/|$(top_builddir)/|"`;; \
          esac; \
          if test -f $$file || test -d $$file; then d=.; else d=$ 
(srcdir); fi; \
          dir=`echo "$$file" | sed -e 's,/[^/]*$$,,'`; \
          if test "$$dir" != "$$file" && test "$$dir" != "."; then \
            dir="/$$dir"; \
            $(mkdir_p) "$(distdir)$$dir"; \
          else \
            dir=''; \
          fi; \
        ......
---

Since srcdir (and thus also top_srcdir) is derived from the directory  
component from the call to configure (i.e. the '/Users/sander/ 
foo-1.0/' part from '/Users/sander/foo-1.0/configure') this will  
translate into
---
        $(mkdir_p) $(distdir)/Users/sander/foo-1.0/data
---
which is clearly wrong.

Furthermore, I wonder why this directory creation for EXTRA_DIST  
entries is included in the first place, since a couple of lines below  
in the Makefile.in we have:
---
          dir=`echo "$$file" | sed -e 's,/[^/]*$$,,'`; \
          if test "$$dir" != "$$file" && test "$$dir" != "."; then \
            dir="/$$dir"; \
            $(mkdir_p) "$(distdir)$$dir"; \
          else \
            dir=''; \
          fi; \
---
which seems to take care of creation of the directory if it did not  
already exist.

foo-1.0.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Best regards,
Sander Niemeijer