Re: [Plib-users] The examples

[Sebastian U. <ud...@ha...>]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, sjb...@ai... (Steve Baker) wrote:
> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 18:36:00 -0500
> To: pli...@li...
> From: sjb...@ai... (Steve Baker)
> Reply-To: pli...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Plib-users] The examples
>
> Sebastian Ude wrote:
>
> > Again - argh ! From the automake manual:
>
> Well, on the theory of "Go With What Works" - and "Don't F**k With What
> You Don't Understand"...perhaps you'd be so kind as to put the
> Makefile.am's back to where they work - then I'll do another quick
> Examples/Demo's release.
>
> We can figure out what's really wrong later - but it's important that
> everyone can download working examples/demos.
>
> Thanks!

I am sorry Steve, but you can't blame the missing configure helper scripts
on me, and what you suggest does NOT solve the problem.

Look - mkinstalldirs, config.sub, config.guess and install.sh are not
listed the top-level Makefile.am; and not because I removed them, but
because they have never been in there (check the CVS archive, if you want)
!

So how did the files make into the plib-1.6.0.tar.gz tarball, then ? The
answer is simple: Because autoconf has always _automatically_ added these
files to the distribution. I verified it, it really does.

If the files were not added to the distribution, the reason for that was
that they were not in the directory prior to the 'make dist' ! In this
case, it does not help AT ALL to (re-)add anything to Makefile.am; the
build system just can't add a non-existing file to the distribution.


The question we need to ask is why the files were missing in the "examples"
directory, and the answer is that autoconf does NOT install the
'mkinstalldirs', 'missing', 'install-sh', 'config.sub', 'config.guess' in
the current directory if it finds them in '..'.

Try it - take a fresh PLIB CVS tree, run ./autogen.sh from the top-level
plib directory. autoconf will install the configure helper scripts to the
top-level plib dir.

Now, cd to 'examples' and run ./autogen.sh from there as well. autoconf
finds the helper scripts in '..' and does NOT install them to the
'examples' directory again.


As you see, everything works as long as you keep the directory hirarchie -
but if you distribute the 'examples' directory seperately, the example's
configure script won't find its helper scripts in '..' as it expected ->
BUMMER !

That's just the behaviour of autoconf. As you can see, the problem has
*nothing* to do with me removing the helper scripts from the examples
Makefile.am file, which I think was a good move by the way, because it is
just unnecessary to list them there.

Again - re-adding them would not help a single bit, because the problem is
not that the build system does not know about the scripts, but that the
build-system can't add non-existing files to the distribution.


Perhaps you'd be so kind as to do a bit of research in the future prior to
blaming me for problems that I am not responsible for.

Thanks.


The solution of the problem is - if it is not obvious - either to remove
the scripts from the top-level plib directory prior to excecuting
'autogen.sh' from the examples directory in order to make the distribution,
or to move the 'examples' dir out of the plib source tree. In both cases,
'autoconf' won't find the helper scripts in '..', which is what we want to
achieve.


- Sebastian