<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.26.0"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Fri, 2011-02-25 at 08:59 -0800, Keith Packard wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <TT>So, I'm a bit confused here -- I do 'make distcheck' to build releases,</TT> <TT>and it works for me. I'd like to know how I can test this patch to make</TT> <TT>sure it does what you expect.</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> The failing scenario involves builds where srcdir != builddir. Automake calls this a VPATH build. <A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#VPATH-Builds">http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#VPATH-Builds</A> This type of build addresses a requirement where multiple binaries can be generated from a single source tree by modulating the configuration. For example a build with dri and without dri. The distcheck target uses a VPATH build to build and install the package. It can find errors that are not found during a regular build because it builds from "a virtual tarball from makefile" rather than the source on disk. A classic error is new header file that was not added in the makefile. A developer, or most likely a distro, can use a VPATH setup to build. They can also run distcheck from this VPATH build. This is the failing scenario as I understand it. The test case is to build xserver from a VPATH build and then run distcheck. A VPATH build can be created this way: <BLOCKQUOTE> <PRE> xserver$ make distclean xserver$ mkdir build && cd build xserver/build$ ../configure --prefix whatever # note the ../ xserver/build$ make distcheck </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> You need to run distclean from your source tree to clean the current configuration. Create a build directory where binaries will be generated. Run the "configure" script located in the source tree from the build tree. No need to autogen, we are not re-creating the configuration. Just like for a source tree, you don't need to "make" the build directory, just run distcheck. You have a set of tarballs in the build dir, not srcdir. You can run distclean from the build dir, go back to the srcdir and configure it, and resume using it. </BODY> </HTML>