On 11/19/2012 01:03 PM, Björn Stenberg wrote: > Stefano Lattarini wrote: >> You could add a dummy dependency for these missing sources, so that make >> won't try to rebuild them (and fail, because there are no rules to do so): > > Yay, that is a neat workaround which I hadn't seen before. > > However, this requires me to create a custom input for each package > (and potentially each version). That is a maintenance burden similar > to patching every package. > > In contrast, updating check.am to split check into build/run is > forward and backward compatible and doesn't have to be adapted to > changes in the test suites. > > Is there a downside I'm not seeing? > First, a smaller nit:
-check-TESTS: $(TESTS) +AM_RECURSIVE_TARGETS += buildtest runtest + +buildtest-TESTS: $(TESTS) + +check-TESTS: buildtest-TESTS + $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) runtest-TESTS + +runtest-TESTS: @failed=0; all=0; xfail=0; xpass=0; skip=0; \ With this, you force an extra recursive make invocation over every user. Now that we are suggesting to move towards non-recursive make setups, this kind of changes is deprecated, and definitely unfit for the Automake's core. In addition, and more to the point, the serial testsuite driver is deprecated, and kept in maintenance-mode only. If you want your change to be integrated into Automake, I suggest you aim for the parallel testsuite. But I'm not sure that the semantic you want will be as easy to implement there as it was for the serial tests. Regards, Stefano