Re: autotest and make distcheck

[Steffen Dettmer]

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 7:09 PM, <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 6:19 PM, <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Well, distcheck (which comes from Automake) really aims to be a "come
>> on, let me ensure this package is good in all kinds of ways" target,
>> so it also tries out installcheck.  This makes sense, too, because it
>> already builds and installs the package somewhere; for packages where
>> that is an expensive operation, you might not want to do it more often
>> than necessary.

A working `make check' could even be considered a pre-condition
of `make install', so having `make distcheck' performing both
IMHO seems to be correct.

> I see your point here, of cause it makes sense.
> However how it will work e.g. in a case of cross-compile?

The distcheck build by default will be configured with no
configure options (can be overwritten by specifying
DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS), thus no --host option will be given
and no cross-compiling will be activated and `make check' works
(with native compiler etc).

> I can do build/install/uninstall it on my host but testsuite will
> always fail since it is for the different HW.

Of course the results of the native built check programs is
somewhat limited but often far better than no check at all :)

oki,

Steffen