how to make autotools tests read files?

my autotools project has a couple of unit-tests. one of these tests (filereader) needs to read a file (data/test1.bin)

Here's my filesystem layout: - libfoo/tests/filereader.c - libfoo/tests/data/test1.bin

and my libfoo/tests/Makefile.am:

AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign
AM_CPPFLAGS = -I$(top_srcdir)/foo
LDADD = $(top_builddir)/src/libfoo.la

EXTRA_DIST = data/file1.bin

TESTS = filereader
check_PROGRAMS= filereader
filereader_SOURCES = filereader.c

this works great, as long as i do in-tree builds. However, when running the test-suite out-of-tree (e.g. make distcheck), the filereader test cannot find the input file anymore.

This is obviously because only the source tree contains the input file, but not the build tree.

i wonder what is the canonical way to fix this problem?

• compile the directory of the test-file into the unittest (AM_CPPFLAGS+=-DSRCDIR=$(srcdir))
• pass the qualified input file as a cmdline argument to the test? (e.g. $(builddir)/filereader $(srcdir)/data/file1.bin)
• copy the input file from the source tree to the build tree? (cp $(srcdir)/data/file1.bin $(builddir)/data/file1.bin? how would a proper make-rule look like??)