Should 'make dist' generate an MD5 file automatically?

[Peter Johansson]

If automake provides a dist-local variable this no-brainer..

[Peter Johansson]

Automake does not provide a dist-local, and then I am not convinced it is a great idea to hack around autotools.

We could add a md5 tag using two-liner like

md5: dist
  md5sum $(distsir).tar.gz > $(distdir).tar.gz.MD5

[Peter Johansson]

I think one should use distcheck to make a dist and it would allow a distcheck-hook creating a md5 file.

From the Automake documentation

If the distcheck-hook rule is defined in your top-level Makefile.am, then it will be invoked by distcheck after the new distribution has been unpacked, but before the unpacked copy is configured and built. Your distcheck-hook can do almost anything, though as always caution is advised. Generally this hook is used to check for potential distribution errors not caught by the standard mechanism.

[Peter Johansson]

Here is the blurp with newlines

If the distcheck-hook rule is defined in your top-level Makefile.am, then it will be 
invoked by distcheck after the new distribution has been unpacked, but before the 
unpacked copy is configured and built. Your distcheck-hook can do almost anything, 
though as always caution is advised. Generally this hook is used to check for potential
distribution errors not caught by the standard mechanism.

[Peter Johansson]

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