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musasabi

Member

From: Chicago, IL

Registered: 2011-06-23

Posts: 63

Reading through "Autotools: A practitioner's guide"

I'm not new to Linux or C, but I am fairly new to hand-writing makefiles and have never touched the autotools.

That said, I'm reading through John Calcote's book and experiencing some weirdness in the middle of Chapter 2.

gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$ ls
Makefile  src
gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$ make distcheck 
rm jupiter-1.0.tar.gz &> /dev/null
rm -rf jupiter-1.0 &> /dev/null
mkdir -p jupiter-1.0/src
rm: cannot remove `jupiter-1.0.tar.gz': No such file or directory
cp Makefile jupiter-1.0
cp src/Makefile jupiter-1.0/src
cp: accessing `jupiter-1.0/src': Not a directory
make: *** [jupiter-1.0] Error 1
gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$ ls -alh
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x 3 gfi gfi 4.0K 2012-07-25 15:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 gfi gfi 4.0K 2012-07-25 13:28 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 gfi gfi  660 2012-07-25 15:53 jupiter-1.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 gfi gfi  660 2012-07-25 15:48 Makefile
drwxr-xr-x 2 gfi gfi 4.0K 2012-07-25 14:56 src 
gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$ rm jupiter-1.0 
gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$ make distcheck 
rm jupiter-1.0.tar.gz &> /dev/null
rm -rf jupiter-1.0 &> /dev/null
mkdir -p jupiter-1.0/src
rm: cannot remove `jupiter-1.0.tar.gz': No such file or directory
cp Makefile jupiter-1.0
cp src/Makefile jupiter-1.0/src
cp src/main.c jupiter-1.0/src
tar -zcvf jupiter-1.0.tar.gz jupiter-1.0
jupiter-1.0/
jupiter-1.0/Makefile
jupiter-1.0/src/
jupiter-1.0/src/Makefile
jupiter-1.0/src/main.c
rm -rf jupiter-1.0
tar -zxvf jupiter-1.0.tar.gz
jupiter-1.0/
jupiter-1.0/Makefile
jupiter-1.0/src/
jupiter-1.0/src/Makefile
jupiter-1.0/src/main.c
make -C jupiter-1.0 all clean
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0'
make -C src all
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0/src'
gcc -g -O0 -o jupiter main.c
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0/src'
make -C src clean
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0/src'
rm jupiter
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0/src'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/gfi/Autotools/jupiter/jupiter-1.0'
rm -rf jupiter-1.0
*** Package jupiter-1.0.tar.gz ready for distribution.
gfi@ubuntu:~/Autotools/jupiter$

(Yes, this is an Ubuntu VM. Work prefers Ubuntu, but I prefer the Arch forums. Pardon. =P)

As you can see, if I run make distcheck, it'll create a non-directory file and then try to treat it like a directory. Seemingly randomly, if I simply remove the file and run the command again, it'll go through and properly complete it's task.

What's actually happening?

For reference, here's the Makefile, per the book's guidance:

package = jupiter
version = 1.0
tarname = $(package)
distdir = $(tarname)-$(version)

all clean jupiter:
        $(MAKE) -C src $@

dist: $(distdir).tar.gz

$(distdir).tar.gz: FORCE $(distdir)
        tar -zcvf $(distdir).tar.gz $(distdir)
        rm -rf $(distdir)

$(distdir):
        mkdir -p $(distdir)/src
        cp Makefile $(distdir)
        cp src/Makefile $(distdir)/src
        cp src/main.c $(distdir)/src

distcheck: $(distdir).tar.gz
        tar -zxvf $(distdir).tar.gz
        $(MAKE) -C $(distdir) all clean
        rm -rf $(distdir)
        @echo "*** Package $(distdir).tar.gz ready for distribution."

FORCE:
        -rm $(distdir).tar.gz &> /dev/null
        -rm -rf $(distdir) &> /dev/null

.PHONY: FORCE all clean dist distcheck

Last edited by musasabi (2012-07-25 22:54:56)

musasabi

Member

From: Chicago, IL

Registered: 2011-06-23

Posts: 63

Re: Reading through "Autotools: A practitioner's guide"

Some further investigating reveals that the jupiter-1.0 file that's created is actually an identical copy of the Makefile. ...How did that happen?