Re: [bug-libunistring] ‘cdefs.h’ missing from the distribution

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Ludo,

Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > The EXTRA_DIST variable was indeed lacking unistring/cdefs.in.h. Does this
> > mean that Hydra creates its tarballs using the 'make dist' command?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > For snapshots taken from version control, this 'make dist' rule is
> > most often not up to date. "make", "make check", and "make install"
> > are frequently tested during development, but "make dist" is not.
> 
> ... which makes it a useful test.  ;-)

I disagree: It's a decision that is part of project policy, to do the packaging 
for
distribution either continually during development or only before a release. For
some of my projects, where "make distcheck" takes 1 hour, I don't want to do it
continually.

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. If you would do one of the following,
it would be clear more immediately:
  a) Do "make distcheck" instead of "make dist",
  b) Compare the contents of the tarball created with "make dist" with the
     contents of the checkout, ignoring .git and similar files.
     Simply printing a warning
       "Warning: The following files are present in the checkout but not in the
        distribution tarball:
          ...
          unistring/cdefs.in.h
          ..."
     would be helpful.

Bruno