Hi, When using a read-only srcdir, "make dist" will generate a tarball whose permissions have all files read-only (though directories are writable). I noticed this because "dist-hook" targets cannot actually modify any files in distdir as they're all read-only (without first running chmod, anyway), causing distcheck failures. While the GNU coding standards do not demand write permissions on files in distribution tarballs (I'm not really sure why), Automake's behaviour in the build directory should not depend on whether or not srcdir is writable.
Tested with both automake-1.11.1 and git master. Here's a simple example: % cat >configure.ac <<'EOF' AC_INIT([test], [1.0]) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign]) AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile]) AC_OUTPUT EOF % cat >Makefile.am <<'EOF' EOF % autoreconf -is % ./configure && make dist % tar tvf test-1.0.tar.gz drwxr-xr-x 550/509 0 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/ -rw-r--r-- 550/509 89 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/configure.ac -rw-r--r-- 550/509 22000 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/aclocal.m4 -rwxr-xr-x 550/509 98862 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/configure -rw-r--r-- 550/509 0 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/Makefile.am -rw-r--r-- 550/509 13264 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/Makefile.in -rwxr-xr-x 550/509 11419 2009-12-10 12:58 test-1.0/missing -rwxr-xr-x 550/509 13663 2009-12-10 12:58 test-1.0/install-sh (notice correct user write permissions on all files) % tar xf test-1.0.tar.gz % chmod -R a-w test-1.0 % mkdir build && cd build % ../test-1.0/configure && make dist % tar tvf test-1.0.tar.gz drwxr-xr-x 550/509 0 2012-02-24 09:59 test-1.0/ -r--r--r-- 550/509 89 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/configure.ac -r--r--r-- 550/509 22000 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/aclocal.m4 -r-xr-xr-x 550/509 98862 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/configure -r--r--r-- 550/509 0 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/Makefile.am -r--r--r-- 550/509 13264 2012-02-24 09:56 test-1.0/Makefile.in -r-xr-xr-x 550/509 11419 2009-12-10 12:58 test-1.0/missing -r-xr-xr-x 550/509 13663 2009-12-10 12:58 test-1.0/install-sh (notice that user write permissions are missing) Automake should at least add user write permissions to all files in distdir prior to running dist-hook (and hence prior to generating the distribution tarball). Cheers, -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)
