Re: bootstrap bug with tests directory

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Eric,

> Is the bug that
> gnulib-tool outputs relative paths, and then bootstrap changes the
> relative directory structure which breaks those paths?

Yes. gnulib-tool computes the appropriates number of ../
(see variable testsbase_inverse and its use in AM_CPPFLAGS).
The purpose of passing options like --tests-base to gnulib-tool
is so that it can construct Makefile.am files with appropriate
references between each. No one is supposed to change the directory
structure after building Makefile.am files; that's simply not going
to work.

'bootstrap' should be more careful to not change the directory levels.

> That is, should gnulib-tool be outputting $(top_builddir)/._bootmp/lib,
> rather than ../../..

It's better to get away with the minimum of variables. Moving directories
around after running gnulib-tool was never supported and would be an
insane requirement. It's better if you fix 'bootstrap' to not create
an additional level of directories.

Bruno