Re: testsuite.dir location

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Eric,

* Eric Blake wrote on Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 04:16:05PM CEST:
> 
> Is it intentional that running testsuite outputs testsuite.log and
> testsuite.dir in $PWD?

Yes.  That's what a hundred useful programs (cc, for example) do by
default with output.  (Programs writing to "`dirname $inputfile`" by
default are evil.  But we're not talking about them now.)

> Right now, the top-level m4 Makefile.am does:
> 
> # Using `cd' in backquotes may print the directory name, use this instead:
> m4__cd                = CDPATH="$${ZSH_VERSION+.}$(PATH_SEPARATOR)" && cd
> CD_TESTDIR    = abs_srcdir=`$(m4__cd) $(srcdir) && pwd`; cd tests
> TESTSUITE = tests/testsuite
> 
> check-local: tests/atconfig $(srcdir)/$(TESTSUITE)
>       $(CD_TESTDIR); \
>       $(TESTS_ENVIRONMENT) $(SHELL) $$abs_srcdir/$(TESTSUITE) \
>               $(TESTSUITEFLAGS)
> 
> but that dumps testsuite.log in the srcdir,

No, why would you think that?

> But if I remove the
> $(CD_TESTDIR), then testsuite.log gets dropped in the directory where I
> ran make,

Well, CD_TESTDIR does two things: compute abs_srcdir, and "cd tests".
It does not enter the source tree for the latter, unless you have a
bug in your shell.

> and I found it odd that because m4 made ./testsuite.log while
> autoconf made tests/testsuite.log because of each project's choice of
> whether to have recursive Makefiles.

That's what the "cd tests" is for.

> Is it worth adding a flag to testsuite to tell it which directory output
> files should be dumped in?  Then I could tell m4's testsuite to create
> testsuite.log in the tests subdirectory of the build dir.

Yes maybe, but it's close enough to a new feature and far enough from a
critical bug that we can postpone this two weeks.

Cheers,
Ralf