Subject: Re: bug#79049: ChangeLog is added to distribution even when inside a false conditional

From: Tomas Volf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 21:58:13 +0200

Karl Berry <[email-masked]> writes:

> Thanks for the report and looking into the code. There have been
> previous reports relating to targets and conditionals, e.g.,
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13940 (from 2013 ...)
> and I think it's been mentioned in mail and elsewhere, too.
>
> Updating the doc is no problem, thanks. But I'm not sure how to do a
> real fix.  The conditional might be defined at configure-time, so
> automake can't know whether it's true or not when it's running, as far
> as I can see.

Hm, this is very good point I failed to realize.

> Maybe you or someone else has a clearer idea of how to proceed?

Dropping the magic related to these special files is probably not
possible now, so only realistic option I see is to document the edge
case and move on.  Not great, so I hope someone will have a better
idea. :/

Tomas

-- 
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.