Re: PATCH + What might cause this failure?

[Bruce Korb]

Eric wrote:

> Not sure whether this is relevent or not,
> but it might offer a clue.
[[...]]
>  - "automake --add-missing" didn't think install-sh was in fact
>    missing, because it could find the copy in pkg-root, because:
[[...]]
> Workaround: add this to pkg-root/distrib/configure.ac:
>         AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([.])
> 
> That defeats the search path shown above, which keeps automake
> from seeing ../install-sh etc., and thus forces it to put another
> copy directly into distrib.

Interesting.  Of course, I already use AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([config])
and, though this is a compound package, it turned out to be a
result of configuring the config/Makefile file.  That is an
undocumented no-no.  Given the horrible and incomprehensible
consequences, it is deserving of a special check.  That special
check ought to bypass the horrible consequences, but short-term
should at least emit a specific message telling the user, "No, no!"

Oh, PacBell seems to be eating my emails and I am likely
unsubscribed from all my email lists, so you have to reply
directly.  Evidence for this is my patch.  It's not in the
email archive.  So, here it is:

It turns out I want to distribute the source for a library that may or
may not get built.  Consequently, though I configure the Makefile when
building the distribution, I likely won't actually build the thing.
That has the following consequences for "make distcheck" (again):

1.  The library, a .deps subdirectory and some dependency files
    get dropped into the distribution.  This happens because
    that directory must be specified in the EXTRA_DIST variable
    when it is not in the SUBDIRS variable.

2.  During distcheck, the tarball is unrolled and all the files
    and directories are made read-only.

3.  Next, distcheck configures the thing, re-creating many of
    these .deps files

4.  When distcheck starts to construct the new tarball, it copies
    the source directory, preserving permissions, then it copies
    built files over the source directory files.  Except it can't.
    It dies.

The fix is in a file named, approximately, dist.m4.
When a distribution file/directory is found in the source tree,
it should be copied into the tarball and then have write permissions
enabled so that built files can be added to the directories and
overwrite files copied from the source tree.