Hi Olaf, Tim.

On 03/09/2012 08:53 PM, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
> Olaf Lenz <olenz@icp.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
> 
>> [...]
>> The problem seems to be a race condition.
>> "make dist-bzip2" populates the distribution dir, tars it and deletes it
>> after 5 seconds.
>
Nope -- it deletes it *immediately*, and then re-tries to delete it after 5
seconds if the first deletion fails.  This is done in an attempt to accommodate
systems like MinGW where an "active" directory cannot be deleted:

 <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=10470>

 During that time "make dist-xz" has started and noticed
>> that the distdir already exists. Unfortunately, it is deleted while
>> dist-xz is still packing.
> 
> For a possible workaround, see
> <URI:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.bugs/4940>.
> I agree that it would be nice to fix this properly.
> 
> Tim
> 
I've reproduced the bug with the attached test case (committed to maint).

I've also verified that the bug was also present in automake 1.11.2 and
automake 1.11.1, so this is not a regression introduced by the "sleep 5"
change referenced above.

For the moment, and until the bug is properly fixed, my advice is: don't
run multiple "dist-*" targets in the same make invocations.

Regards,
  Stefano