Need help with cleaning up a working GNU Autotools setup 5058

Peter T. Breuer skrev:

You said:

My guess is that you don't want to write down the three lines I gave yourself, but instead want automake to make makefiles with them in?

Is that it?

I answer:

Yes, that's exactly what I want. If I only add what you suggest then 'make clean', 'make install' etc won't automagically be provided by Automake. I guess I would also loose the configuration set up by Autoconf(?).

You suggested that the following be done for each sub directory:

cd collections-bin make -f ..-..-global-Makefile target VPATH=..-..-global

Instead of just execute a plain 'make' from the base directory 'rsd-' and have make and the project's Makefiles do the work. (Makefiles in

Ok, now I understand(?). I don't think you have ever done this from scratch. You have downloaded CVS distributions where the Makefile.in has already been created for you. Right? You don't only create makefiles by executing 'configure', what you do is examining the installation target machine (your computer) to make the compiled target portable to your machine (by adapting Makefiles according to config.h and Makefile.in).

Ok, so you seriously want me to perform:

cd collections-bin make -f ..-..-global-Makefile target VPATH=..-..-global

for 80-100 subdirectories manually? No, I would have to create 1 or more scripts to do that for me and the 'make clean etc' stuff. And as files are added, directories are added or removed I would have to maintain both my autotools configured environment together with additional scripts. That doesn't make sense to me.

If I use Autotools and something changes in my compile environment (which in the beginning of the project will happen quite often), I only add a subdir in the base Makefile.am, and add a Makefile.am in the new subdir and execute 'autoreconf'. Voila! I can execute a simple make from the base directory again.

I don't want to compile outside the source tree. I want properly configured Makefile.ams so I only need to type make from the base directory! Here's an example of a Makefile.am for 'collection-'

binPROGRAMS = collectionstest collectionstestSOURCES = DynamicString.c testmain.c

MY QUESTION: How do I edit the above Makefile.am (and possibly configure.in) to avoid getting object files and other targets mixed with my source files?

Hope this makes things a bit clearer

Sune