Re: Files used in EXTRA_DIST not working with distcheck

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Joshua,

* Joshua Moore-Oliva wrote on Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 01:00:22AM CEST:
> I have two files, cspm.lex and cspm.y that due to circumstances out of
> my control need special processing.  The only way I could get them
> into the package without automake automatically processing them was by
> using the EXTRA_DIST variable, as follows
> 
> EXTRA_DIST = cspm.lex cspm.y
> 
> I can make dist, and the package works fine.  However, make distcheck
> always fails with the following error

> bison -v -d cspm.y
> bison: cannot open file `cspm.y': No such file or directory
> 
> It appears as if distcheck is not including the EXTRA_DIST files in
> its check.  Is there any way I can force distcheck to include
> EXTRA_DIST files during checking?

It would be easier to say what's happening if you showed a bit more of
your build setup, for example the rules that use cspm*.

Without that information, I can only guess: Your package is broken with
respect to VPATH builds, i.e., srcdir != builddir.  "make distcheck"
tests this.

Try this: generate your tarball.  In an empty directory, do:
  gzip -dc $PACKAGE.tar.gz | tar xvf -
  mkdir build
  cd build
  ../$PACKAGE/configure [OPTIONS]
  make
  make check

If this fails, you may need to add a few $(srcdir) and/or $(builddir)
prefixes to your rules (Automake mostly does this for you in its
generated stuff).

Don't hesitate to show the rules; even if it seems to work on your
system, they can be tricky to get right so they work for any "make"
implementation.

Cheers,
Ralf