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

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 02:16:30AM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> However, I hit another problem immediately:
> 
>  (cd tp_api && make  top_distdir=../../texinfo-7.1.90 
> distdir=../../texinfo-7.1.90/doc/tp_api \
>      am__remove_distdir=: am__skip_length_check=: am__skip_mode_fix=: distdir)
> make[5]: Entering directory '/home/g/src/texinfo/GIT/doc/tp_api'
>  cd ../.. && /bin/bash /home/g/src/texinfo/GIT/build-aux/missing 
> automake-1.16 --gnu doc/tp_api/Makefile
> automake-1.16: error: cannot open < doc/tp_api/texi2any_internals.texi: No 
> such file or directory
> make[5]: *** [Makefile:1861: Makefile.in] Error 1
> make[5]: Leaving directory '/home/g/src/texinfo/GIT/doc/tp_api'
> 
> I found it slightly hard to recover from this error and had to resort
> to reverting all my changes and running ./autogen.sh again.
> 
> There is a comment in autogen.sh:
> 
> # missing texi2any_internals.texi stops automake.  Set up a fake
> # texi2any_internals.texi with a file timestamp set in the past,
> # if texi2any_internals.texi is not present
> 
> But texi2any_internals.texi is in MAINTAINERCLEANFILES in
> doc/tp_api/Makefile.am, so will be deleted by "make maintainer-clean".
> I presume that there was some bootstrapping issue with this file that
> necessitated this in autogen.sh, so it is probably likely that many
> "make" targets, include "distcheck", will fail after running
> "make maintainer-clean".

That issue seems to me to be unavoidable.  It seems to me that
texi2any_internals.texi in MAINTAINERCLEANFILES is logical as it is a
generated file.  Then there is this bootstraping issue that requires
running ./autogen.sh or recreating texi2any_internals.texi otherwise.

> texi2any_internals.texi is not tracked in git so its absence is
> not evident from the output of "git status".

I agree that it is better to have those files in git, actually I already
have added texi2any_internals.texi and api_includes/*.texi to git in my
private postrelease wip branch.

-- 
Pat