Subject: bug#9933: ylwrap bug

From: Stefano Lattarini <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 17:22:56 +0100

[CC:ing bug-automake]
[replies can drop the automake list]

Hi Bruce.  In the future, please send bug reports to bug-automake,
so that our bug tracker will keep track of them.  Thanks.

On Tuesday 01 November 2011, Bruce Korb wrote:
> PING:
> 
> The bison accepts the option, --header-file=whatever.h
> "ylwrap" is a wrapper script meant to canonicalize the invocation
> of yacc and bison.  True enough, if you use --header-file you
> had better be using bison, but here is the problem:
> 
> I am working on a project that will only build in a GNU tools environment.
> Therefore, I know that the .l -> .c transformation tool is flex, not
> POSIX lex.  The code I am working with presumes that it can use this:
>     AM_LFLAGS = @LEX_FL@ --header-file=$(LEX_HEADER) -DYY_NO_INPUT=1
> So ylwrap fires off the flex program and it runs just fine, the tiny
> problem is that it also removes the temporary directory before I can
> salvage the generated header.  This is inconvenient.
>
Long-standing bug/limitation.  There are a couple of (dormant) branches
in the automake repository that try to tackle similar issues for yacc
(see also automake bug#7648): `yacc-work' and `ylwrap-refactor'.  But
even if these branches will be finally completed and merged, the changes
they introduce will only appear in automake 1.12.

Regards,
  Stefano