Re: Fix an error during "./configure; make dist"

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 06:59:28AM +0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Hi Gavin,
> 
> > In the other commit I made (a78e787fe3a) it was a simpler fix than the
> > one you sent - hopefully it doesn't make a difference.  (I want to keep
> > it as simple and comprehensible as possible ...
> 
> Well, there is a reason that the patches I submitted contain this
> "move-if-changed" logic (compare file in source dir and build dir, etc.):
> Without it, "make distcheck" fails. Automake's "make distcheck" verifies
> that it is possible to do a VPATH build from a source code tree that is
> read-only.
> <https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Checking-the-Distribution.html>
> 

I have committed your original patch.  I have added a comment to explain
why it is done this way.

I am sure I ran "make distcheck" several times when testing this, but
not with the "make maintainer-clean" first.  In fact, I have never run
"make maintainer-clean" and didn't know it was important.

If it is important we could make a note to check it before releases.

However, I'd like a simpler way without special cases to reinstate some
of these generated files.  It seems to me that if running "make distcheck"
after "make maintainer-clean" was important, it shouldn't require such
a specific recipe to make work.


> $ ./autogen.sh
> $ ./configure
> $ make maintainer-clean
> $ git diff -- doc/html_default_commands_args.texi doc/pod2texi.texi 
> man/pod2texi.1 po_document/texinfo_document.pot 
> tp/Texinfo/XS/gnulib/lib/unicase/special-casing-table.h 
> tp/Texinfo/XS/gnulib/lib/uninorm/composition-table.h 
> tp/Texinfo/XS/main/command_ids.h tp/Texinfo/XS/main/element_types.c 
> tp/Texinfo/XS/main/element_types.h | patch -p1 -R
> $ mkdir bb
> $ cd bb
> $ ../configure
> $ make distcheck


Thanks, I will do more testing and investigation later.