Re: non-GNU make fails.

[Jim Crumpler]

Hi, I had a read about automake - apparently when you do a make dist, it
removes the dependency code, so it wasn't the big issue I thought it was
(ie, people who work on the CVS will see this issue only - and I'm sure they
can deal with building up a gmake)..

Jim..

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Crumpler
To: address@hidden
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 10:25 AM
Subject: non-GNU make fails.


Hi, recent changes in the CVS tree force the use of GNU make upon users on
Solaris (and possibly other OS's but I haven't tested them).. I have a
possible solution below..

CVS checkout date: Wed Jun  5 10:22:42 EST 2002
OS tested : Solaris 9 SPARC and Solaris 8 x86.
configure: ./configure --prefix=/opt/sfw

The error looks something like this.
----------
make  all-recursive
Making all in lib
mksh: Fatal error in reader: = missing from replacement macro reference
Current working directory /home/jgc/zebra/zebra/lib
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `all-recursive'
Current working directory /home/jgc/zebra/zebra
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `all-recursive-am'
----------


My thoughts --

The automake code adds --include-deps to automake, which requires GNU make -
this is because no AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS are specified, so they default to 'gnu'
for GNU standards conformance..

>From automake info:

Automatic dependency tracking
=============================

   As a developer it is often painful to continually update the
`Makefile.in' whenever the include-file dependencies change in a
project.  Automake supplies a way to automatically track dependency
changes, and distribute the dependencies in the generated `Makefile.in'.

   Currently this support requires the use of GNU `make' and `gcc'.  It
might become possible in the future to supply a different dependency
generating program, if there is enough demand.  In the meantime, this
mode is enabled by default if any C program or library is defined in
the current directory, so you may get a `Must be a separator' error
from non-GNU make.

-----

Possible Solutions: I haven't consulted the GNU Coding Standards, but
possible solutions could be to add the following line to all Makefile.am
files.  This will remove the dependency stuff that add --include-depds

AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = no-dependencies

This may be a hassle for developers though..

Jim.