Skip to content

gnuscripts/lalsuite_help2man.am: prevent man files being rebuilt unnecessarily

Karl Wetterequested to merge
ANU-CGA/lalsuite:fix-help2man-make-rules into master

Detailed Description

Fixes Makefile changes introduces in !2495 (merged).

!2495 (merged) added a rule help2man-setup which could be overridden per Makefile.am to setup a directory so that executables within that directory could be executed correctly by help2man. (For example see lalapps/src/string/Makefile.am.) I had added this rule as a dependency of the rules which generate the .man files, e.g.:

%.man: % help2man-setup

However, because help2man-setup is a PHONY rule (as it's a command, not a file), this triggers the .man files to always be rebuilt. While not harmful per se, this is obviously unnecessary, and just adds more noise to the make output.

The solution was to remove help2man-setup from the %.man etc. rules and instead add it to the BUILT_SOURCES variable, which contains things that should be built before anything else. This ensures help2man-setup is run only once, and only when things are being (re)built.

API Changes

Please tick one of the following options:

  • These changes do not modify the API.
  • These changes do modify the API, and are backwards compatible.
  • These changes do modify the API, and are backwards incompatible.

For examples of changes that do not modify the API and/or are considered backwards (in)compatible, please see the contributing guide.

Justification for Backwards Incompatible Changes

n/a

Review Status

n/a

Merge request reports