files missing from the distribution (was: [bug-li bunistring] ‘cdefs.h’ missing from the distribution)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello, and a happy new year,

* Ludovic Courtès wrote on Sat, Jan 02, 2010 at 10:31:56PM CET:
> Bruno Haible writes:
> 
> > Another point is that your way of doing "make dist" then build from it
> > is not providing good error messages pointing to the origin of the problem,
> > that is, a file missing from EXTRA_DIST.
> 
> Well, christmas is over, but that’d be a request for ‘bug-automake’
> I think.

Are you looking for something like this?

check-srcdir-files-not-in-dist: distdir
        diff -rq $(srcdir) $(distdir)

(the -q is GNU-specific)

It is bound to have false positives (backup files, version control meta
files and other files you don't want distributed (yet)), as well as
false negatives (in case your build tree is equal to, or below, your
source tree; in case you distribute files from the build tree).  Other
than that, I wouldn't know how Automake should be able to know which
files you want distributed and which errors result from missing files.

Generally it's a good idea to list sources (including headers) in
*_SOURCES variables; that way, they are automatically distributed,
and you only need to list them once (not sure if that applies here).

Cheers,
Ralf