Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool: The distcheck rule

| ## 13.3 The distcheck rule The `make dist` documentation sounds nice, and `make dist` did do something, but how do you know it really works? It is a terrible feeling when you realize your carefully crafted distribution is missing a file and won't compile on a user's machine. I wouldn't write such an introduction unless Automake provided a solution. The solution is a smoke test known as `make distcheck`. This rule performs a `make dist` as usual, but it doesn't stop there. Instead, it then proceeds to untar the new archive into a fresh directory, build it in a fresh build directory separate from the source directory, install it into a third fresh directory, and finally run `make check` in the build tree. If any step fails, `distcheck` aborts, leaving you to fix the problem before it will create a distribution. While not a complete test -- it only tries one architecture, after all -- `distcheck` nevertheless catches most packaging errors (as opposed to portability bugs), and its use is highly recommended.

This document was generated by Gary V. Vaughan on February, 8 2006 using texi2html