Re: Tidy and fix clean and distclean rules for old testsuite.

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hallo Ralf,

On 22 Aug 2010, at 11:23, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> In the Libtool tree, invoking 'make distclean' after 'make clean'
> or before 'make check' has ever run, fails because there are no
> Makefiles in the old test subdirectories (and automake's distclean
> rule looks at DIST_SUBDIRS not SUBDIRS).  This patch fixes this
> long-standing error by creating stub Makefiles, and IMHO using
> minimal insider information about Automake-generated rules:
> basically only the name of the 'distclean-recursive' rule, to
> which we must add a prerequisite.  Just adding to distclean-local
> doesn't work, that gets invoked too late.
> 
> OK to apply?

Well, it is an improvement over what we have, so... sure, go ahead.

However, I continue to strongly dislike the old testsuite, and would
much prefer to migrate it's tests into Autotest.  I understand the
argument that our kludgy old tests are good for coverage of libtool
with the bootstrapped autotools... but, honestly, I'd rather find
out that the libtool I'm planning to install is going to fail with
*my* autotools, than I would be told that the old testsuite still
passes with whatever versions it happened to be bootstrapped with!

Getting rid of the old testsuite was actually my motivation for
starting an Autotest based testsuite in the first place; and because
bootstrap and reconf issues with the old testsuite have always been
(and continue to be) a real pain.

> Even with this patch, 'make clean' may be very slow in the case where
> the test subdirectories need reconfiguring.  That is an orthogonal and
> IMVHO minor issue, which I don't know how fix easily though.

I do: see the first six words of my last para ;)

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (address@hidden)

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