Subject: bug#12064: closed (Re: bug#12064: distclean failure with Automake 1.12.2)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:53:02 +0000

Your bug report

#12064: distclean failure with Automake 1.12.2

which was filed against the automake package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
12064: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12064
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact [email-masked] with problems

Subject: Re: bug#12064: distclean failure with Automake 1.12.2
From: Stefano Lattarini <[email-masked]>
To: Peter Johansson <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:51:31 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Reference:
<http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12064>

Since I've seen no further reports of similar problems, and since we
have concluded the issue in question wasn't due to an Automake bug,
but rather to a legitimate-but-slightly-backward-incompatible change
in Automake's behaviour (change that I stupidly introduced in a minor
version, rather than in a major version as it would have been
appropriate -- sorry again about that), I'm closing this bug report.

If anybody has further observations or objections, feel free to
continue the discussion here; that should still be possible even
if the bug has been closed.

Thanks,
  Stefano

Subject: distclean failure with Automake 1.12.2
From: Peter Johansson <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:12:30 +1000
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi automakers,

I was about to make a release when I discovered that distcheck suddenly 
didn't work anymore. The distclean rule failed with

Making distclean in doc
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/peterJo/projects/software/yat-0.8.x/yat-0.8.2/_build/doc'
Makefile:498: ../yat/classifier/doxygen.mk: No such file or directory
Makefile:499: ../yat/normalizer/doxygen.mk: No such file or directory

This was for a stable branch release so there had just been minor 
changes in two .cc files and no changes at all wrt the build system. 
After some investigation I found that Automake 1.12.2 has changed the 
order directories are traversed for clean rules. I must say I find it 
unexpected that behaviour like this is changed between 1.12.1 and 
1.12.2. I thought this kind of changes were only introduced when bumping 
versions from say 1.11 to 1.12 and not between stable releases.

The reason I got the failure is that files doxygen.mk are included into 
doc/Makefile. These files are generated in the corresponding Makefile 
and listed under DISTCLEANFILES so they are deleted during 'make 
distclean'. As SUBDIRS in top Makefile.am is SUBDIRS = doc yat that was 
not a problem before since doc was entered first during cleaning and 
doc/Makefile was already gone when the doxygen.mk files were removed. 
Perhaps a strange use case, but still I wanted to report it.

I think I've found a workaround so I can get out the release without 
needing to downgrade Automake.

Thanks,
Peter