Re: [Pan-devel] gnome-doc-utils redux

[Duncan]

Heinrich Müller posted on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:49:51 +0000 as excerpted:

> Duncan posted on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:14:32 +0000:
> 
>> commit d49229012425f2662c2b7a9694c517a23f31cbff gnome-doc-utils issues

>> configure.in, starting on line 270 (problem line 274)
>> 
>>  AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile
>>                   pan.spec pan.iss README.windows
>> +                 help/Makefile
>>                   po/Makefile.in uulib/Makefile pan/Makefile
>> 
>> If I delete that line, everything's fine.  No conditional around

>> automake tries to create help/Makefile even when help is turned off,
>> and help/Makefile.am has...
>> 
>> include $(top_srcdir)/gnome-doc-utils.make
>> 
>> ... as its first line, but gnome-doc-utils.make apparently won't get
>> copied to $top_srcdir unless help is turned on.
>> 
>> So I don't know how to do it, but that help/Makefile line apparently
>> must be made conditional, however it's done...
> 
> fixed.

Quick work.  Thanks!

However, not yet fixed.

After spending an hour or two with the automake and autoconf infopages, I 
THINK what's happening is that in this:

if test "x$want_gnome_doc_help" = "xyes" ; then
  AC_CONFIG_FILES([help/Makefile])
fi

... the first and last lines are final-configure-file shell code that's 
not actually run until configure itself is executed; until then they're 
simply treated as string-literals and left alone.  Meanwhile, the middle 
line consists of the AC_CONFIG_FILES macro that must be expanded BEFORE 
the final configure file is executed as it's used to CREATE that final 
configure file, with help/Makefile fed to that macro as a parameter...

To prove my suspicions I changed the "xyes" above to "xno", with no 
change in result -- it still pulled in (and broke with) help/Makefile 
either way, as it would if it were treating the first and last lines as 
literal pass-thru text, while trying to handle the middle one.

HOWEVER!  I DID trace the problem one file further down.

In help/Makefile.am, if I #-out the first line to this:

#include $(top_srcdir)/gnome-doc-utils.make

... it works.  Further, if * take out the $(top_srcdir)/ bit, the 
automake.out error then refers to help/gnome-doc-utils.make instead of
just gnome-doc-utils.make, and if I change it to xgnome-doc-utils.make, 
it's that in the error.

So we're getting closer.  In addition to making the error disappear by 
removing or commenting the line, I can change the error by changing the 
line, which is more than I was getting before!

Also, simply touching the gnome-doc-utils.make file in question, 
presumably only if help is disabled, so the file exists but is empty, 
works.  But of course I don't know how to do that before that include...

Too tired to make much further sense of anything at this point.  
Hopefully the post makes sense.  Maybe after some sleep...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman