Re: gettext-0.14.2 fails on parallel build

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Bruno" == Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

 Bruno> Your modification does not fix this, because
 Bruno> - It didn't change the dependencies of this rule, or the rules which
 Bruno> depend on this one. Therefore this rule can still be started by two
 Bruno> parallel processes.
 Bruno> - The first line, "rm -f elc-temp && touch elc-temp", does nothing to
 Bruno> prevent parallel execution.

My impression is that you believe `make -j N all' could spawn
several processes on this elc-stamp target.  This is not true.
Make starts only one command per target, and wait for this
target to be completed before building any other dependent
targets.

The only way to have the same target built several times is to
explicitly start separate make processes yourself.  (That was
what was happening.)

When make encounters the following fragment

all: one.elc two.elc three.elc

one.elc two.elc three.elc: elc-stamp
        ...

it first has to build the dependency: elc-stamp.  Only one
process does this.  Then, and only after elc-stamp has been
built, make can run the three "..." commands in parallel.  It
won't start the "..." commands their dependencies (here elc-stamp)
are built.

In Greg's output this is clearly apparent.  The elc-stamp is run
a first time alone.  After it has finished, three `make
elc-stamp' are explicitly started by the three parallel instance
of the "..." rule.

Hope it's clearer.

 Bruno> The only nit on this fix is that it doesn't work on
 Bruno> filesystems that don't support hard links (like the BeOS
 Bruno> filesystem).

The automake's aux scripts use mkdir as atomic test-and-set.
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz