>>> "Mark" == Mark Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Mark> In dejagnu.am there is: Mark> ## Flags for DejaGNU. Mark> RUNTESTFLAGS = Mark> As far as I can tell, all that does is: Mark> (a) Make for confusion if the Makefile.am sets that variable Mark> elsewhere, and Any setting in Makefile.am overrides the default setting supplied by Automake. This applies to all variables and almost all rules in Automake. Although RUNTESTFLAGS should normally not be overridden (grep the doc for AM_RUNTESTFLAGS) I don't expect a problem with that. If there is one, it's certainly a bug elsewhere. Mark> (b) Prevent users from setting the value in the environment. Similar variables (ETAGSFLAGS, CTAGSFLAGS, and JAVACFLAGS) are defined this way. This has always puzzled me and I believe the point is precisely to have environment independent builds, at least I can't think of any other. Maybe Tom can shed some light on this, since he actually defined all of these variables consistently: each time FOOFLAGS is defined empty and AM_FOOFLAGS is used but not defined. AFAIC, I'd rather spur the use of "make FOOFLAGS=value" or "make -e" because environment dependent builds are harder to debug when you have no clue they are environment dependent. I guess everybody has already been bitten by a hidden environment variable. Still, I'm not a DejaGNU user, so maybe none of this makes sense and RUNTESTFLAGS must be handled differently from other variables. -- Alexandre Duret-Lutz
