Re: Including foreign makefiles

[Adam C Powell IV]

Adam C Powell IV wrote:

> Tom Tromey wrote:
>
> > >>>>> "Adam" == Adam C Powell IV <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > Adam> So the question is, is there an automake-kosher way to include a
> > Adam> foreign makefile, or specify that certain variables will be
> > Adam> somehow defined elsewhere, not in Makefile.am or configure.in?
> >
> > Not really.
>
> Somehow I didn't think so.

I think the following options are available to me:

   * hard-code the variable I had hoped to get from the foreign makefile, which 
will break
     if it differs from platform to platform or machine to machine.
   * give up on cross-platform and hand-create .la files for the Debian 
packages of the
     foreign libs (I maintain that package), which will only allow linking 
against the
     Debian-packaged version of the toolkit.

Neither of these is especially appealing, I had hoped to be able to release 
something which
works across platforms.  Can anyone think of other options?

Given that upstream (of the foreign library package with the makefile I'd like 
to include)
is reluctant to even *version* their libraries, or to install anything in 
standard places,
I'm quite certain they'd never accept the enormous patch required to 
automake/libtoolize
their tree.

So without an automake-kosher way to include foreign makefiles, this and other 
free software
toolkits like it are unavailable to those of us who use automake.  Oh well.

A suggestion on how this might be made to work: allow specification in a 
Makefile.am that
looks something like:

include filename defines var1 var2 var3

e.g. for this example:

include $(PETSC_DIR)/bmake/$(PETSC_ARCH)/base \
  defines PETSC_TS_LIB

to avoid the missing definition error.  (Automake would presumably strip the 
defines, and
only use it to override the error.)

How does this sound?

-Adam P.

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