There are 3 variables used by automake when calling dejagnu's runtest: $RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS - default from automake $AM_RUNTESTFLAGS - set by package developer $RUNTESTFLAGS - for user configuration
However, AM_RUNTESTFLAGS is used first and is therefore overwritten by RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS. My use case is that I am not using recursive make and therefore want to set dejagnu's srcdir to the testsuite directory. But RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS then sets it to $srcdir. Here's the lines causing my issue: RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS = --tool $$tool --srcdir $$srcdir [...] if $(RUNTEST) $(AM_RUNTESTFLAGS) $(RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS) $(RUNTESTFLAGS); \ [...] A possible fix is to swap their order (simple patch attached). Another issue I am having with this is that the recipe to create the site.exp file, also built by automake, sets dejagnu's srcdir to the Makefile $srcdir again. I am unsure how best to fix that (I guess a maintainer variable). Carnë