Automake, GNU make, check, and (ignored) pattern rules

Question 1

You need to tell automake that foo.hdb is a source file that is to be constructed. Add the following to Makefile.am:

BUILT_SOURCES = foo.hdb

Question 2

The line

%.cdb: %.hdb

does not do anything. Check the GNU make manual and you'll see that a pattern rule without a command line is used to DELETE a previously defined rule with that same pattern. Since there's no previous rule, this is essentially a no-op.

If you have a command that creates TWO output files with ONE invocation of a rule, then you need to put both patterns in the same rule, like this:

%.cdb %.hdb: %.h
        PYTHONPATH=$(top_builddir)/cgen/src python $(top_builddir)/cgen/src/isti/cgen/run.py $<

This will tell GNU make that both targets are generated from one invocation of the rule. BE AWARE! This syntax only has this behavior for pattern rules. Explicit rules with multiple targets do something entirely different (confusingly enough).

As for the make clean behavior, I'm not sure. The makefile generated by automake is too complex for me to just read it; it would require some debugging (run it and trace what happens). However, I suspect that the rules there are not designed properly to allow a clean target and a build target to both be run in the same invocation of make. Run the two commands separately and see if that works better:

make clean
make check

Question 3

First of all: you do not need to include the "*.h" in *_SOURCES. The automake will generated code to generate the dependencies. From the manual: Header files listed in a _SOURCES definition will be included in the distribution but otherwise ignored

The change you made in the plain Makefile ("Note that I've switched from xxx.hdb to corm_xxx.h, etc, so that file extensions remain OK") is essential. The automake FILTERS the *_SOURCES list using the filename extension in order to see what to call (CC, CXX, F77).

The following Makefile.am will work:

TEST = check_foo

check_PROGRAMS = check_foo

check_foo_SOURCES = check_foo.c foo.db.c
check_foo_CFLAGS = 
check_foo_LDADD = 

%.db.c %.db.h: %.h
    echo "int i = 1;" > foo.db.c
    echo "int j;" > foo.db.h

clean-local:
    rm -f *.db.h *.db.c

Question 4

Let me try to add an indirect answer/discussion to the existing direct ones.

I recently moved away from make for the same kind of reasons you experienced: it is extremely powerful but sometimes a bit difficult to debug when things do not go as expected.

I recently discovered pydoit which is very promising as a debuggable replacement build tool for make. Since the notion of "pattern rules" was not present in it, I proposed an independent package to do the job: fprules.

This is how you would perform the same task that you mention in your post, with doit and fprules:

from fprules import file_pattern

# all: check_foo
DOIT_CONFIG = {'default_tasks': ['check_foo']}

CFLAGS = '-I../../clib/src'
LDFLAGS = '-L../../clib/src/.libs'

# check_foo: check_foo.c foo.h corm_foo.h corm_foo.c
#     gcc $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) $^ -o $@ -lcorm -lsqlite3
def task_check_foo():
    """
    Compiles the `check_foo` executable
    """
    src_files = ('check_foo.c', 'foo.h', 'corm_foo.h', 'corm_foo.c')
    dst_file = 'check_foo'
    return {

        'file_dep': src_files,
        'actions': ["gcc %s %s %s -o %s -lcorm -lsqlite3" % (CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, ' '.join(src_files), dst_file)],
        'verbosity': 2,
        'targets': [dst_file],
        'clean': True
    }

# corm_%.h corm_%.c: %.h
#     PYTHONPATH=../../cgen/src python ../../cgen/src/isti/cgen/run.py $<
def task_gen_corm():
    """
    Generates files `corm_%.h` and `corm_%.c`
    for each header file `%.h`.
    """
    for data in file_pattern('./*.h', dict(h_file='./corm_%.h', c_file='./corm_%.c')):
        yield {
            'name': data.name,
            'file_dep': [data.src_path],
            'actions': ["PYTHONPATH=../../cgen/src python ../../cgen/src/isti/cgen/run.py %s" % data.src_path],
            'verbosity': 2,
            'targets': [data.h_file, data.c_file],
            'clean': True
        }

# clean:
#     rm -f corm_*.h corm_*.c
#     rm -f *.o
# No need to create tasks for this: 
# with 'clean': True, `doit clean` will clean all target files

Then simply run doit in the folder.

Do not hesitate to provide feedback on the projects pages if needed: for example multiline commands are not supported, you can vote for them if you too feel that they are missing: https://github.com/pydoit/doit/issues/314