Re: Automake 1.16.1: problem with non-gnu make and gnulib

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2019, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> And indeed,
>
> GNU hello and GNU datamash (which exhibit the problem)
> have something like this in their Makefile.am:
>
> hello_LDADD =  $(top_builddir)/lib/lib$(PACKAGE).a
> datamash_LDADD =  $(top_builddir)/lib/lib$(PACKAGE).a
>
> While sed and coreutils (which don't have the problem) have:
>
>  sed_sed_LDADD = sed/libver.a lib/libsed.a
>  LDADD = src/libver.a lib/libcoreutils.a
>
> So because of the "$(top_builddir)" the targets gets a "./"
> prefix, and combined with that recent automake change,
> they ended up being considered separated targets by "bmake".

This seems like a bug in those two packages.  It should never be 
desirable to refer to the build directory other than by using the 
knowledge that the build is done using the current directory.

> So the immediate fix/work-around is to remove any path from
> the libraries listed in xxx_LDADD in the projects themselves.
>
> However,
> This change (regression?) seems to come from automake, perhaps
> consider a bugfix for future versions.

It would be good if Automake can warn about unnecessary use of 
$(top_builddir) and make any necessary corrections.

Unfortunately, the 'hello' program is supposed to be a reference 
example of the right things to do.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
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