Hi Bruce!
"Bruce" == Bruce Korb <address@hidden> writes:
[...]
Bruce> When you invoke, "make dist" I believe you are claiming
Bruce> that you wish to construct a new distribution for some
Bruce> distribution-related purpose. If you merely wish to
Bruce> verify that the parts that you can build are built
Bruce> correctly, you would invoke, "make check". If you are
Bruce> making a distribution, then that distribution needs to
Bruce> be verified that all parts of it are functional. It
Bruce> would be difficult to verify the functionality of ag2xml
Bruce> if you do not have libxml2. Therefore, I do not think
Bruce> it is correct to try to do a "make dist" when all
Bruce> components cannot be built.
[...]
I tend to disagree. First, `make dist' is a *user* target and
I'd expect it to work even when some part of the tree is not
being built. For instance a user might have fixed the package
locally, and will want to run `make dist' in order to carry his
fixed version to other hosts. He may not care about the subpart
of the package that isn't build. Second, there are cases where
it is simply not possible to build all directories: setup with
architecture-dependent directories come to mind.