Re: What is supposed to happen in "make distcheck"

[Bruce Korb]

An additional data point:
On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 12:29 PM Bruce Korb <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> I ask because after printing this:
>
> > =================================================
> > autogen-5.18.15 archives ready for distribution:
> > autogen-5.18.15.tar.gz
> > autogen-5.18.15.tar.xz
> > =================================================
>
> I get this message:
>
> > CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && /bin/sh 
> > /u/bkorb/tools/ag/autogen-bld/config/missing aclocal-1.16 -I config
> > Makefile:488: recipe for target 'aclocal.m4' failed
>
> I know the immediate cause. I fiddled while it was doing the distcheck:
>
> > $ mkdir YYY ; mv configure* YYY/.
>
> I was doing that because after distcheck, it was starting over. Over and over.
> As I read the build rule for "distcheck:"
>
> > # This target untars the dist file and tries a VPATH configuration.  Then
> > # it guarantees that the distribution is self-contained by making another
> > # tarfile.
> > distcheck: dist
> > [...]
> >    @(echo "$(distdir) archives ready for distribution: "; \
> >      list='$(DIST_ARCHIVES)'; for i in $$list; do echo $$i; done) | \
> >      sed -e 1h -e 1s/./=/g -e 1p -e 1x -e '$$p' -e '$$x'
>
> and that should be it. Clearly, something is awry causing something
> else to be triggered, but I have no idea how to diagnose the issue. I
> only know how to stop it with a manual intervention. (viz. moving the
> configure* scripts out of the way.)

By moving aside "Makefile*"s, it fails. Likewise "configure*".
However, if I remove both, then it finishes fine with a zero exit code.
'Course, I'd rather not have to do that, but I need some debugging
advice to figure out how to diagnose the issue.