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14.4 Checking the Distribution
Automake also generates a distcheck
rule that can be of help to
ensure that a given distribution will actually work. distcheck
makes a distribution, then tries to do a VPATH
build
(see section Parallel Build Trees (a.k.a. VPATH Builds)), run the test suite, and finally make another
tarball to ensure the distribution is self-contained.
Building the package involves running ‘./configure’. If you need
to supply additional flags to configure
, define them in the
DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS
variable, either in your top-level
‘Makefile.am’, or on the command line when invoking make
.
If the distcheck-hook
rule is defined in your top-level
‘Makefile.am’, then it will be invoked by distcheck
after
the new distribution has been unpacked, but before the unpacked copy
is configured and built. Your distcheck-hook
can do almost
anything, though as always caution is advised. Generally this hook is
used to check for potential distribution errors not caught by the
standard mechanism. Note that distcheck-hook
as well as
DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS
are not honored in a subpackage
‘Makefile.am’, but the DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS
are
passed down to the configure
script of the subpackage.
Speaking of potential distribution errors, distcheck
also
ensures that the distclean
rule actually removes all built
files. This is done by running ‘make distcleancheck’ at the end of
the VPATH
build. By default, distcleancheck
will run
distclean
and then make sure the build tree has been emptied by
running ‘$(distcleancheck_listfiles)’. Usually this check will
find generated files that you forgot to add to the DISTCLEANFILES
variable (see section What Gets Cleaned).
The distcleancheck
behavior should be OK for most packages,
otherwise you have the possibility to override the definition of
either the distcleancheck
rule, or the
‘$(distcleancheck_listfiles)’ variable. For instance, to disable
distcleancheck
completely, add the following rule to your
top-level ‘Makefile.am’:
distcleancheck: @: |
If you want distcleancheck
to ignore built files that have not
been cleaned because they are also part of the distribution, add the
following definition instead:
distcleancheck_listfiles = \ find . -type f -exec sh -c 'test -f $(srcdir)/$$1 || echo $$1' \ sh '{}' ';' |
The above definition is not the default because it's usually an error if
your Makefiles cause some distributed files to be rebuilt when the user
build the package. (Think about the user missing the tool required to
build the file; or if the required tool is built by your package,
consider the cross-compilation case where it can't be run.) There is
an entry in the FAQ about this (see section Files left in build directory after distclean), make sure you
read it before playing with distcleancheck_listfiles
.
distcheck
also checks that the uninstall
rule works
properly, both for ordinary and DESTDIR
builds. It does this
by invoking ‘make uninstall’, and then it checks the install tree
to see if any files are left over. This check will make sure that you
correctly coded your uninstall
-related rules.
By default, the checking is done by the distuninstallcheck
rule,
and the list of files in the install tree is generated by
‘$(distuninstallcheck_listfiles)’ (this is a variable whose value is
a shell command to run that prints the list of files to stdout).
Either of these can be overridden to modify the behavior of
distcheck
. For instance, to disable this check completely, you
would write:
distuninstallcheck: @: |
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