Re: [PATCH] {maint} distcheck: add support for AM_DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS

[Eric Blake]

On 06/15/2011 11:31 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>> DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS is useful in situations when a plain
>>> "./configure" is not meaningful to a source tree, i.e. when a
>>> source-tree mandatorily requires some configuration argument.
>> Such a source-tree is violating GNU Coding Standards.
> 
> a) DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS makes it compliant.

No, {AM_}DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS makes it possible for 'make
distcheck' to paper over the GCS violation.

'make distcheck' is not mandated by GCS.  Rather, it is a handy helper
to prove that the rest of things that _are_ mandated by GCS are obeyed.
 One of those GCS requirements is that './configure' in isolation do
something useful, rather than fail, if all prerequisite packages are
installed.

http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/standards.html#Configuration

> b) There are situations, in which it's technically very hard if not
> impossible to make automake's vanilla "make distcheck" functional.

And the fact that such cases exist, contrary to GCS, is why it is nice
of automake to give hooks to make 'make distcheck' easier to paper over
these shortcomings in GCS compliance in the meantime.

>>   On the other
>> hand, automake strives to be useful to more than just GCS-compliant
>> packages.
> Agreed.

Sounds like we're in violent agreement, then :)

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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