Re: absolute build directory with spaces

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote on bug-gnulib:
>> Coreutils tests with an absolute build directory name that contains
>> a space.  Not quoting this directory name caused a failure.
>> * tests/test-vc-list-files-git.sh: Quote PATH dir name.
>> ...
>> --- a/tests/test-vc-list-files-git.sh
>> +++ b/tests/test-vc-list-files-git.sh
>> @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
>>  # along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.  */
>>
>>  : ${srcdir=.}
>> -. "$srcdir/init.sh"; path_prepend_ $abs_aux_dir .
>> +. "$srcdir/init.sh"; path_prepend_ "$abs_aux_dir" .
>
> This extra check, part of "make distcheck", that verifies that the package
> builds even when the srcdir or builddir contains a space, would be useful
> for more packages. On mingw, it is frequent to have spaces in directories.

It would be useful for builddir, but not for srcdir.
That srcdir is "sane" is already guaranteed via every
reasonably-modern autoconf-generated configure script.

> Could Automake offer this check, if a certain Automake option is specified
> in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE?

I'd like that.
Then I'd use it in all automake-using projects,
and not just in the few that have this custom check[*].

But note that as I've implemented it for coreutils, this
is rather expensive, in that it requires an additional, full
non-srcdir build-and-make-check from tarball (sole difference is
that the absolute builddir has a component named "a b").
It has to be non-srcdir, since the srcdir cannot be the
invalid like the builddir can.

However, if this build-and-make-check passes, there is little
reason to repeat the process with a "normal" builddir, so there
is no inherent requirement that it take more time.

--
[*] It's the taint-distcheck rule here:
http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/dist-check.mk#n49