Re: Confused section of 1.11 manual

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Reuben,

* Reuben Thomas wrote on Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 09:59:47AM CEST:
> Section EXEEXT:
> 
> "Unfortunately, due to the change in Autoconf 2.50, this means you
> must always add this extension.  However, this is a problem for
> maintainers who know their package will never run on a platform that has
> executable extensions."
> 
> It is unclear to me how the fact that you must always use $(EXEEXT) is
> a problem for maintainers who know their package will never run on a
> platform that has executable extensions. Sure, using $(EXEEXT) in such
> a case is redundant, but why is it a problem? Maybe it is better
> described as an annoyance? Or is there some other result than a little
> extra typing?

Actually, I'm not sure.  But I think it might have been (or might still
be) due to how automake parses the Makefile.am.  Remember, for automake
it is not clear that
  prog: prereqs
        rule

and
  prog$(EXEEXT): prereqs
        rule

name the same target for you; that is because at the time automake is
run, EXEEXT is not defined yet.

The EXEEXT handling has changed here and there several times, it could
well be that it is less of a problem today, but I know that it's kind of
ugly and may have dark corners.  I would need to look at it in more
detail again.

Cheers,
Ralf