"make distcheck" from a non-srcdir build dir was failing the "test_conf.sh" test TEST: test_conf.sh Failed to process /t/libvirt/.j/libvirt-0.7.6/tests/confdata/*.conf diff: /t/libvirt/.j/libvirt-0.7.6/tests/confdata/*.out: No such file or directory! 1 FAILED due to the fact that tests/confdata/Makefile.am was specifying its files via this: EXTRA_DIST = $(wildcard *.conf) $(wildcard *.out) That led to a distribution tarball that lacked those files, which are required by the test_conf.sh test. Automake normally warns us not to use $(wildcard ...), but we've suppressed the warning. This is one case in which using $(wildcard...) really should be avoided. In a non-srcdir build, each of those expands to the empty string, since the actual files are not in that directory, but in $(srcdir). My first reflex was to just hard-code the 4 file names: -EXTRA_DIST = $(wildcard *.conf) $(wildcard *.out) +EXTRA_DIST = \ + fc4.conf \ + fc4.out \ + libvirtd.conf \ + libvirtd.out But that'd make for more maintenance overhead if/when we add more files. Here it doesn't really matter, but in the next patch you'll see that it really does, in general. So here's a better way: Account for the fact that the files are available in $(srcdir): EXTRA_DIST = \ $(patsubst $(srcdir)/%,%,$(wildcard $(srcdir)/*.out $(srcdir)/*.conf)) From: Jim Meyering <meyering(a)redhat.com&gt; Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:01:11 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] build: avoid non-srcdir "make distcheck" failure (test_conf.sh) * tests/confdata/Makefile.am (EXTRA_DIST): Apply $(wildcard... to $(srcdir)/..., and then remove the prefix. --- tests/confdata/Makefile.am | 4 ++-- 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/tests/confdata/Makefile.am b/tests/confdata/Makefile.am index 5e97605..eaaadbc 100644 --- a/tests/confdata/Makefile.am +++ b/tests/confdata/Makefile.am @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@ - -EXTRA_DIST = $(wildcard *.conf) $(wildcard *.out) +EXTRA_DIST = \ + $(patsubst $(srcdir)/%,%,$(wildcard $(srcdir)/*.out $(srcdir)/*.conf)) -- 1.7.0.367.g566c3