Re: dist-hook and rights

[Akim Demaille]

>>> "Alexandre" == Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

 > On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 03:11:35PM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
 >> 
 >> Hi!
 >> 
 >> When running make distcheck, dist-hook is run twice: once for the
 >> outer tarball, then for the dist performed on the tree built by
 >> distcheck.
 >> 
 >> There is a big difference between the two though: in the second case,
 >> the tree is read only, which forbids side effects from dist-hook,
 >> which should be valid IMHO.

 > I do not understand this.  dist-hook is there to allow modifications
 > of things inside $(distdir)/.  I believe this directory is never
 > read-only.

Actually, it may be, and especially during the inner dist!  But you
know this, as shows your next paragraph.  Just for the records:

distdir: $(DISTFILES)
[...]
        $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) \
          top_distdir="$(top_distdir)" distdir="$(distdir)" \
          dist-hook
        -find $(distdir) -type d ! -perm -777 -exec chmod a+rwx {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -444 -links 1 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -400 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -444 -exec $(SHELL) $(install_sh) -c -m a+r {} {} 
\; \
        || chmod -R a+r $(distdir)

The perms are fixed after dist-hook, so the inner distdir builds an inner
builddir with basically `cp', hence it propagates the read-only
permissions from the source tree.  It is only after that dist-hook was
running that the write permissions are restored in builddir.

Hence outer dist-hook has read/write rights, while the inner has read
only.


 > Since this is the inner `make dist', every file in the source tree is
 > expected to be up-to-date (or the tarball generated by the first `make
 > dist' is bogus), and their should be no reason to update them.  That
 > also guaranties that `make dist' can work even of the source tree is
 > read-only.

Well, that's a different matter.

I have a specific dist-hook tailored to build tarballs sliced in
different ways.  This is triggered by

          make dist STAGE=?

and dist-hook uses STAGE to cut some directories, hence I rewrite
configure.ac and some Makefile.am, and then run bootstrap to
autoreconf everybody.

Now, the inner make dist also receives this cutting request, and
reruns bootstrap (with its autoreconf -f).  Hence the problem.



The question is: am I really out of the line here?  In which case,
maybe the documentation should emphasize this issue for dist-hook.
And if not, let's add another chmod-restoring find invocation before
running dist-hook.

I'm fine with both (but of course the second will require that I
reconsider my tarball slicing architecture).