Re: Avoid VPATH-related distcheck failures with non-GNU make

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 04:39:50PM CET:
> On Sunday 16 January 2011, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 04:50:31PM CET:
> > > Hmm... To me, this sounds an awful lot like sweeping the dirt under
> > > the rug.
> > 
> > OK, so here's a more open alternative: let's try to fix the failures.
> > Are you going to work on this, or at least provide significant help?
> >
> I might try, but obviously I cannot guarantee anything.
> 
> What about the following middle ground solution for the moment: extend
> the distcheck target to honor a switch (which should probably be an
> environment variable, say 'DISTCHECK_USE_VPATH') telling to perform
> simply an in-tree build (while continuing to perform VPATH builds by
> default).

Well, if we change distdir.am then we are already adding interfaces
and API and all that.  That's not what we should do "for the moment",
but only if we conclude that that's the only choice we have.

Looking in more detail at the test failures, it's not actually all that
many that happen in distcheck, maybe a dozen distinct tests or so.
So, apologies for my previous exaggeration.  Let's just see if we can
fix them, first.

Thanks,
Ralf