Re: TODO

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Noah Misch wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 12:28:24PM -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > The problem is that Automake does *not* know the dependency graph of
> > each object.  Within one Makefile, this is possible (and mostly
> > supported) but most projects depend on SUBDIRS to recurse though
> > subordinate Makefiles so there is no full dependency graph of each
> > object.  The build is dependent on careful ordering by the developer
> > rather than Makefile dependencies.
>
> Thanks for the correction.
>
> If Automake descends into SUBDIRS to install in the same order it does to build
> and uses `make' dependencies to ensure proper ordering within each SUBDIR, then
> the products should relink/install in the correct order.  Right?

That would be my assumption as well.  The current library install 
mechanism does not ensure that libraries are installed in the same 
order that they are built.

A problem exists in that if a library is already installed on 
the system, it may be used by accident, either at build time, or at 
install time.  This masks serious build/install ordering issues.

Package developers usually already have the library installed on the 
system so they may not see the failure in their environment, but 
end-users do.  'make distcheck' helps significantly with discovering 
these problems.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen