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Asked: 2026-05-24T07:01:57+00:00

I’ve got a program that’s written in C, built using automake/autoconf, and has two

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I’ve got a program that’s written in C, built using automake/autoconf, and has two test suites. One is a unit test suite also written in C; the other is end-to-end and is (currently) written in Python. I want “make check” to run the unit tests always, and the end-to-end tests only if Python is installed. This is what I have now:

TESTS = unittests
if HAVE_PYTHON
TESTS += tester.py
tester_py_SOURCES = src/test/tester.py.in

tester.py: src/test/tester.py.in Makefile
        $(SED) -e 's,[@]PYTHON[@],$(PYTHON),' < $< > $@
        chmod +x $@
endif

HAVE_PYTHON is set by the configure script with

AM_PATH_PYTHON([2.6],, [:])
AM_CONDITIONAL([HAVE_PYTHON], [test "$PYTHON" != ":"])

This works correctly on Unix, but blows up with “no rule to make tester.py.exe” on Windows. Also, the copy-and-substitute technique for getting the #! line right means I can’t break up the test suite into multiple modules.

Is there a better way to do this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You must use _SOURCES for compiled things only, so that’s why it’a adding $(EXEEXT). Try this:

    TESTS = unittests
if HAVE_PYTHON
TESTS += tester.py
# Possibly use += here depending on the rest of your Makefile.am
check_SCRIPTS = tester.py
# I added $(srcdir) here so VPATH builds still work.
tester.py: $(srcdir)/src/test/tester.py.in Makefile
        $(SED) -e 's,[@]PYTHON[@],$(PYTHON),' < $< > $@
        chmod +x $@
endif

    Is there any reason you don’t just do the substitution via configure.ac? 

    AS_IF([test "$PYTHON" != ":"], [AC_CONFIG_FILES([src/test/tester.py])])

    This will remake the script using config.status and autogenerate rebuild rules.

    EDIT 1:

    If what you really want to do is run the python tester script as part of make check, I’d do this:

    check-local:
if HAVE_PYTHON
        $(PYTHON) $(srcdir)/src/test/tester.py
endif

    (I put the check-local outside the if HAVE_PYTHON so that you can define other commands to run as part of check-local, if needed.)

    You might prefer writing this, instead:

    check-local:
        test "$(PYTHON)" != ":" && $(PYTHON) $(srcdir)/src/test/tester.py

    See extending in the automake manual.

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