Re: Fix Makefile.in in data-directory

[Pedro Alves <pedro at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thursday 21 October 2010 03:29:58, Doug Evans wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Jie Zhang <jie@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it's really necessary to fix that. binutils and gcc also don't
> > allow "make -j4 install" to directly after "configure". "make -j4 all
> > install" also fails for binutils and gcc. I think it's already an convention
> > that those software are built with
> >
> > ./configure
> > make
> > make install
> >
> > Do we really need the effort to fix GDB?
> 

GDB's makefile's in question reads:

># Traditionally "install" depends on "all".  But it may be useful
># not to; for example, if the user has made some trivial change to a
># source file and doesn't care about rebuilding or just wants to save the
># time it takes for make to check that all is up to date.
># install-only is intended to address that need.
>install: all install-only 

(enphasis on the comment.)  Maybe it's the 'Traditionally "install" depends
on "all".' part that's not so traditional afterall?  I really don't know.

(most users are better taught separate "make" and "make install" steps,
because it's most often necessary to need extra previleges
and "sudo make install" to install to /usr/local, but not to "make".)

> fwiw, I think the answer is yes.
> 
> Note that we don't need to consider ./configure ; make -j4 install.
> 
> The issue arises with a simple "$EDITOR foo.c ; make -j4 install".

Yeah, that's the scenerio where I got surprised that gdb started
both building and installing _simultaneously_, which has all the looks
of a dependency bug.  If install always behaved like install-only, I
wouldn't have been surprised!

FWIW, if "install" depending on "all" in the first place is
not so common (even "wrong?") afterall in GNU projects (it seems
automake does not?), I'd be personally okay to stop doing it in
gdb as well, and get rid of install-only, keeping only "install".
I never used install-only myself, and it does seem weird to behave
differently from bfd (which is automake based).

(To be clear, your new patch is fine with me as well, thanks!  Please
wait for Doug's review though.)

-- 
Pedro Alves