Re: Long file lists and deep directioriies with Automake

[PenguinDude24]

On 12/17/2013 04:05 PM, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 8:21 PM, PenguinDude24<address@hidden>  wrote:
>
>    
> > Automake generates the Makefile.in files, and configure makes the 'Makefile'
> > for the directory. But the generated makefiles give errors. GNU Make gives
> > the ominous 'missing separator error'. That errors can be triggered for a
> > variety of reasons. Long file list for targets and deep nested dirs are at
> > least two of the reasons.
> >
> >      
> Are you sure those are the reasons, and there aren't extra newlines
> being inserted in these long lines? Can you post the relevant lines of
> the Makefiles?
>    

Yea, I'm sure or by my own analysis. I'm also using GNU Emacs, and Emacs 
is anal when it is in Automake or Makefile modes. Certain Emacs modes 
have error checking and it did not warn me -- likely no simple error 
detected. Emacs has saved my bacon many times by alerting me to simple 
errors that may have taken up too much time. Many times GNU Emacs told 
me "suspicious line 44 in file. Want to save anyway?" I look at the line 
and there is some syntax highlighting to tell me what is up with the file.

I did some internet searches and came across some "programmer sites" 
(you know all of the popular ones). Some guys were having issues with 
the 'missing separator' error message.

The software project I was working on required many data files to be 
installed -- hundreds of them. I mean a few hundred files (most of them 
only a few bytes, but they had structured file names for clarity). And 
since Automake does not support wildcards for adding targets or data 
files to lists (says that in the documentation), you have to specify 
file names manually, so that Automake can make rules for them accordingly.

By adding the files manually, I found out that files that were down to 
the third level, i.e "dir-1/dir-2/dir-3/foo-datafile.bin", I got 
'missing separator' error.

I used the 'nobase_dist_pkgdata_DATA' directive to schedule Automake to 
write out the data to Makefiles. When the list to that directive 
contained too many data files, I also got the 'missing file separator 
error' from GNU Make.

The Makefile.am looks like this:

# Makefile.am -- Automake file for sub-dir foo/data/normalized

# Over a hundred files added this way. Not hand typed -- just copy and 
paste from terminal :)
nobase_dist_pkgdata_DATA = foo-datfile-0.bin foo-datfile-1.bin 
foo-datefile-n.bin foo foo-datefile-N.bin

# Of course, blank rule so that generated makefiles will not complain 
about 'no rule to make foo target'
$(nobase_dist-pkgdata_DATA):
    @echo 'Doing NO-OP for datafile ' $@
Generated Makefile croaked. My solution was to break up the long file 
lists into smaller ones, and used 'SUBDIR' more often. Meh, dispite the 
limitation, I still used Autotools.
I'm on Debian by the way.