Re: non-recursive make and tests

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> It would be quite helpful if Automake offered a mode in which it 
> automatically changed the working directory to the directory where the test 
> program/script resides and set $srcdir to the relative position in the source 
> tree to support VPATH builds.  This would emulate the operation of recursive 
> builds.  Either a global Automake option could be used to enable this 
> (subdir-tests), or a "RTESTS" (relative tests) mode would be provided.

It seems that this topic has not caught anyone's interest since there 
have been no follow-up posts today.  Surely someone else has converted 
their recursive project to a non-recursive project and noticed that it 
is very difficult to get test suites working again?

The current check-TESTS definition works great for recursive builds, 
but is miserable for non-recursive builds.

The $(srcdir) value passed is often essentially useless since it may 
just be '.'.  It is difficult for the Makefile to produce better 
values except for perhaps offsets from @abs_top_srcdir@ and 
@abs_top_builddir@ substitutions.  It may also be possible to play 
games by passing back-ticked shell script fragments rather than normal 
values in the TESTS_ENVIRONMENT specification.

Regardless, the tests themselves should not have to know their 
position in the source or build tree.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen