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I am building a project using autotool. Basically the project depends on several 3rd-party projects which are also managed by autotool. 

my_project/
my_project/3rd-party/

To enable recursive build, I add AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS macros in my configure.ac:

AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([3rd-party/gtest-1.7.0])
AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([3rd-party/libstatgrab-0.91])
AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([3rd-party/leveldb-1.2.0])

This gives me a convenience of recursive build, link, and clean. However, I do not want to install all these 3rd-party libraries but my own project when I hit make install. Is there anyway for me to get rid of this particular recursion?

Jes
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2 Answers2

4

I don't think you can simply remove this single one if you don't change any makefile in the 3rd-pardy directories (which you could even do from the main Makefile, just rename the target via sed [dirty hack]).

I guess you internal call configure in the 3rd-party directories, don't you? If yes you may set the prefix (or data-prefix and exec-prefix) different. It may be a good idea in any case to create a3rd-party-build` directory and both build the 3rd-party stuff there and change the install prefix to use this.

You didn't asked for it but the "solution" is different: remove the 3rd-party stuff from your main makefile:

  • create a build_dep.sh
  • this may download and/or unpack and configure and make the 3rd-party stuff
  • your configure script (if you have this) would check if these are existing and working, if not: search the system directories instead.

This both solves the problem and allows to use the libraries/tools if they exist already and gives the user the option to use a different version while keeping the simple "you can have it all from the main directories and don't need to get/build the dependencies on your own"

Simon Sobisch
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  • It would be good to have an answer that doesn't require removing all the automake stuff from third_party. There are Makefile.am with googletest that work break with a top level configure when doing everything but make install. e.g. mb-system looks to be almost there... how do I block the recursion of install? e.g. https://github.com/dwcaress/MB-System/issues/129 – Kurt Schwehr May 15 '19 at 00:03
  • As noted above - if you need it (locally) but don't want to install it - remove it from configure.ac and create a build_dep.sh or similar. Then this can be called (for example at the end of the configure script or within your Makefile (add it as dependency there and the build_dep.sh within the rule for the 3rd-party)). – Simon Sobisch May 15 '19 at 11:50
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This is isn't quite what I was hoping for because you also have to bring in every recursive rule that you want to work in those subtrees, but it's closer.

https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/master/Makefile.am#L14

DIST_SUBDIRS = src conformance benchmarks third_party/googletest

# Build gmock before we build protobuf tests.  We don't add gmock to SUBDIRS
# because then "make check" would also build and run all of gmock's own tests,
# which takes a lot of time and is generally not useful to us.  Also, we don't
# want "make install" to recurse into gmock since we don't want to overwrite
# the installed version of gmock if there is one.
check-local:
    @echo "Making lib/libgmock.a lib/libgmock_main.a in gmock"
    @cd third_party/googletest/googletest && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) lib/libgtest.la lib/libgtest_main.la
    @cd third_party/googletest/googlemock && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) lib/libgmock.la lib/libgmock_main.la

# We would like to clean gmock when "make clean" is invoked.  But we have to
# be careful because clean-local is also invoked during "make distclean", but
# "make distclean" already recurses into gmock because it's listed among the
# DIST_SUBDIRS.  distclean will delete gmock/Makefile, so if we then try to
# cd to the directory again and "make clean" it will fail.  So, check that the
# Makefile exists before recursing.
clean-local:
    @if test -e third_party/googletest/Makefile; then \
      echo "Making clean in googletest"; \
      cd third_party/googletest && $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) clean; \
    fi; \
Kurt Schwehr
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    In this case I still think it is more reasonable to keep `AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS` and use a minimal `sed` script to adjust the Makefile.in of the dependencies (called in configure) to early exit the `install` rule. Wouldn't this provide a better "experience"? – Simon Sobisch May 22 '19 at 05:54