Conditional copying

[Dr. David Kirkby]

I'm trying to configure a program such that it will build properly,
whether or not the building is done from the top of the source tree,
or in a separate build directory. If a separate build directory is
used, it is necessary to copy one directory from $top_srcdir/examples
to $top_builddir/examples. 

How I can do the conditional copy? I tried this in Makefile.am

if [ $top_builddir != $top_srcdir ] ; then
cp -R $top_srcdir/examples $top_builddir/examples
fi

as well as something similar to that in the manual
http://www.gnu.org/manual/automake-1.6.1/html_chapter/automake_9.html#SEC28

but both without any success. Automake and autoconf run okay, but the
generated Makefile has an error in it. 

Instead of copying, using symbolic links would make more sense to save
on disk space. How relieable are sybolic links? I was concerned that
if the source directory is on one computer and the build directory on
another, it may not be possible to create the links, although I think
that will be okay. 

Any thoughts on how to solve the problem, or on linking vs copying?

-- 
Dr. David Kirkby,
Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Medical Physics,
University College London,
11-20 Capper St, London, WC1E 6JA.
Tel: 020 7679 6408 Fax: 020 7679 6269
Internal telephone: ext 46408
e-mail address@hidden