Hi, According to the GNU Coding Standard https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html "The dist target should explicitly depend on all non-source files that are in the distribution, to make sure they are up to date in the distribution."
An easy way to test whether the 'dist' target has this property is to run $ ./configure $ make dist or (in a VPATH build) $ ../configure $ make dist without doing "make" before "make dist". Distributed non-source files that make this difficult are the man pages for programs, that are generated from the '--help' output using help2man. While packages that only have a top-level Makefile.am (such as GNU sed or GNU coreutils) get this right, it is a little bit more complicated in packages with a Makefile.am per directory (such as GNU texinfo and GNU gettext). Originally reported for GNU gettext at <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gettext/2024-07/msg00010.html>. In GNU texinfo $ ./configure; make dist fails like this: $ make dist ... (cd info && make top_distdir=../texinfo-7.1.90 distdir=../texinfo-7.1.90/info \ am__remove_distdir=: am__skip_length_check=: am__skip_mode_fix=: distdir) make[3]: Entering directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/info' gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -I.. -I../gnulib/lib -I../gnulib/lib -DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/locale\" -DINFODIR=\"/usr/local/share/info\" -DINFODIR2=\"/usr/local/share/info\" -g -O2 -MT makedoc.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/makedoc.Tpo -c -o makedoc.o makedoc.c mv -f .deps/makedoc.Tpo .deps/makedoc.Po make[3]: *** No rule to make target '../gnulib/lib/libgnu.a', needed by 'makedoc'. Stop. make[3]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/info' make[2]: *** [Makefile:2025: distdir-am] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo' make[1]: *** [Makefile:2019: distdir] Error 2 Find attached a patch that fixes this error. Then, there is another error: $ make dist ... make distdir-am make[6]: Entering directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/doc/tp_api' if /usr/bin/perl -I ../../tp -I ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/lib/ -I ../../tp/ -I ../../tp/maintain/lib/Text-Unidecode/lib/ -I ../../tp/maintain/lib/libintl-perl/lib/ -I ../../tp/maintain/lib/Unicode-EastAsianWidth/lib/ ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/pod2texi.pl --base-level=section --preamble - --subdir=api_includes ../../tp/Texinfo/Commands.pod ../../tp/Texinfo/Common.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/ParserNonXS.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Document.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/ManipulateTree.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Structuring.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Report.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Translations.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Transformations.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Indices.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/OutputUnits.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Texinfo.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Utils.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Unicode.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/NodeNameNormalization.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Text.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Converter.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Info.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/DocBook.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/TexinfoMarkup.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/TexinfoXML.pm ../../tp/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm < ./texi2any_internals_preamble.texi >texi2any_internals.texi.tmp ; then \ cat texi2any_internals.texi.tmp | sed -e 's/^@bye/@__bye/' | sed -e '/^@__bye/r ./texi2any_internals_indices.texi' | sed -e 's/^@__bye//' > texi2any_internals.texi ; \ fi ; rm texi2any_internals.texi.tmp Can't locate Texinfo/ModulePath.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Texinfo::ModulePath module) (@INC contains: ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/../tp ../../tp ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/lib/ ../../tp/ ../../tp/maintain/lib/Text-Unidecode/lib/ ../../tp/maintain/lib/libintl-perl/lib/ ../../tp/maintain/lib/Unicode-EastAsianWidth/lib/ /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.34.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.34 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.34 /usr/share/perl/5.34 /usr/local/lib/site_perl) at ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/pod2texi.pl line 75. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ../../Pod-Simple-Texinfo/pod2texi.pl line 112. make[6]: *** No rule to make target 'api_includes', needed by 'distdir-am'. Stop. make[6]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/doc/tp_api' make[5]: *** [Makefile:2025: distdir] Error 2 make[5]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/doc/tp_api' make[4]: *** [Makefile:2350: distdir-am] Error 1 make[4]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/doc' make[3]: *** [Makefile:2346: distdir] Error 2 make[3]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo/doc' make[2]: *** [Makefile:2028: distdir-am] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory '/TEXINFO/texinfo' make[1]: *** [Makefile:2022: distdir] Error 2 but I'm not proposing a fix for this one since I am not familiar with this part of GNU texinfo.
>From f1313176678e0f35759a5a8d1e95a57806fcd6ca Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 03:39:54 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] build: Fix an error during "./configure; make dist". * Makefile.am (BUILT_SOURCES): Add gnulib/lib/libgnu.a. (gnulib/lib/libgnu.a): New target. --- Makefile.am | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am index a509ec3f16..f385511107 100644 --- a/Makefile.am +++ b/Makefile.am @@ -27,6 +27,11 @@ EXTRA_DIST = ChangeLog.46 ChangeLog.65 ChangeLog.70 \ # distribution directory. TEXINFO_TEX = doc/texinfo.tex +# Ensure that the prerequisites of info/makedoc are built when "make dist" runs. +BUILT_SOURCES = gnulib/lib/libgnu.a +gnulib/lib/libgnu.a: + cd gnulib/lib && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) + # One special target for installers to use by hand if desired. install-tex: cd doc && $(MAKE) TEXMF=$(TEXMF) install-tex -- 2.34.1
