depcomp for texinfo + automake in guile

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

hi automake folks,

in the version of guile i'm munging, i decided to generate texinfo from
scanned source snippets, i.e.:

  .scm -> .doc -> .doc-index -> .texi
  .c -> .doc (or .cdoc) -> .doc-index -> .texi

this is not a simple concatenation, however.  .texi is actually made
from .twerp ("texi with eval-requiring predelictions", yuk yuk) files
that are mostly texinfo w/ some

  @twerpdoc (foo-proc (C scm_foo_proc))

style directives.  these are expanded by a program (twerp2texi, q.v.[1])
which consults the .doc-index files, and as a side effect also creates
under the builddir .deps/foo.Ptexi (naming inspired by depcomp) so that
later changes to .scm or .c trigger .texi rebuild.

i could not find ready documentation (automake 1.6.1) on how to emulate
the "include .deps/foo.Ptexi" since, if i add that to Makefile.am, it
seems automake interprets that for itself instead of passing it through
to the end Makefile.  the workaround is to have configure run a program
after invoking config.status to do the job.  is there a better way?

in any case, the methodology works[1] but only by sidestepping automake
in a few places.  my question is: is there a canonical way to do this
w/in the automake worldview that i've not yet discovered?  if not, what
would be the best way to contribute general handling of .texi generation
to automake?

the other top-level question is: i noticed "automake in guile per rms
request" in a todo list (somewhere).  has anyone started that?  if not,
is anyone in the audience interested in funding that work?

thanks in advance for any insights (and thanks for automake!).

thi


[1] http://www.glug.org/tmp/2002-08/guile-1.4.1.3.20020810.tar.gz
    (work in progress; not all doc/ref/*.twerp files have directives.)