Hi,
I'm using help2man to build manpages that I'd like to distribute with
the source tarball. I followed the instructions/example in the
automake manual, which has manpage foo.1 depend on foo.c and
configure.ac, then does a recursive make to build foo$(EXEEXT):
<http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Errors-with-distclean.html>
This does solve the problem of unnecessarily rebuilding manpages when
the binary is rebuilt/relinked, but it also seems to introduce a race
condition during parallel makes. The problem is that there are now
two ways to build foo$(EXEEXT): (1) the normal automake rule from
bin_PROGRAMS/foo_SOURCES and (2) the recursive make for the rule for
foo.1.
To give a more concrete example, here is a snippet from my
Makefile.am:
#...
bin_PROGRAMS = achd
#...
achd_SOURCES = src/achd.c src/achutil.c
achd_LDADD = libach.la
ach_LDADD = libach.la
#...
doc/achd.1: src/achd.c $(top_srcdir)/configure.ac
$(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) achd$(EXEEXT)
mkdir -p doc
help2man -h -\? -v -V --no-info -n "send ach messages over
streams" ./achd$(EXEEXT) -o $@
And then, when the race fails, I get the following output (pruned
slightly):
% make -kj2
cd . && /bin/bash /home/ntd/git/thebrain.golems.org/lib/ach/missing --run
automake-1.11 --gnu Makefile
cd . && /bin/bash ./config.status Makefile depfiles
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: executing depfiles commands
make all-am
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/ntd/git/thebrain.golems.org/lib/ach'
/usr/bin/gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I./include -MT achd.o -MD -MP -MF
.deps/achd.Tpo -c -o achd.o `test -f 'src/achd.c' || echo './'`src/achd.c
make achd
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/ntd/git/thebrain.golems.org/lib/ach'
/usr/bin/gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I./include -MT achd.o -MD -MP -MF
.deps/achd.Tpo -c -o achd.o `test -f 'src/achd.c' || echo './'`src/achd.c
mv -f .deps/achd.Tpo .deps/achd.Po
/bin/bash ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link /usr/bin/gcc -o achd achd.o
achutil.o libach.la -lrt -lpthread
mv -f .deps/achd.Tpo .deps/achd.Po
mv: cannot stat `.deps/achd.Tpo': No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [achd.o] Error 1
make[2]: Target `achd' not remade because of errors.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ntd/git/thebrain.golems.org/lib/ach'
make[1]: *** [doc/achd.1] Error 2
libtool: link: /usr/bin/gcc -o .libs/achd achd.o achutil.o
./.libs/libach.so -lrt -lpthread
make[1]: Target `all-am' not remade because of errors.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ntd/git/thebrain.golems.org/lib/ach'
make: *** [all] Error 2
So, it looks like the second `mv -f .deps/achd.Tpo .deps/achd.Po' is
failing because the dependency file was already moved. Is there
something silly that I've missed here?
It seems that possible resolutions are:
* Don't do parallel makes
* Don't distribute prebuilt manpages
* Build the manpages in a SUBDIR that gets built after .
Using SUBDIRs seems like the best of those options, though still not
ideal since make may often recurse unnecessarily. Is there any way to
do this without more recursive makes?
Thanks,
-ntd
