Re: Library containing sources of multiple directories

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Daniel,

* Daniel Kraft wrote on Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 05:12:38PM CET:
> 
> I'm new at developing with the GNU build system (automake), and now I've tried
> to "port" an existing project to use an automake-based build system; 
> therefore I
> read some tutorials I found on the WWW, and I also looked at Makefile.am's for
> existing projects.

Look at GraphicsMagick for example.  ;-)
Look at
http://www-src.lip6.fr/homepages/Alexandre.Duret-Lutz/autotools.html

> My problem is that my project contains one big library which is built of many
> source files spread over different sub-directories. As far as I know I could
> build the library by a Makefile.am like:
> 
> lib_LIBRARIES = libGeomExakt.a
> libGeomExakt_a_SOURCES = dir1/a.cpp dir2/b.cpp
> ...
> 
> I.e., mentioning every file in the top-level Makefile. But this isn't what I
> want; it would be far more convenient to list the sources in the
> sub-directories;

,-- Makefile.am:
lib_LIBRARIES =
include geom/Makefile.am
`--

,-- geom/Makefile.am
lib_LIBRARIES += geom/libGeomExact.a
geom_libGeomExact_a_SOURCES = geom/foo.c
include geom/sub/Makefile.am
`--

,-- geom/sub/Makefile.am
geom_libGeomExact_a_SOURCES += geom/sub/bar.c
`---

> Is this something possible with automake? Or do I need to write special
> makefile-constructs for that (e.g., a small library of every directory's
> sources) my own?

Yeah, you can do that, too, at least with libtool.  But unless there's
compelling reasons, I wouldn't do it.  Some people prefer during
development it because it does not rebuild so much (exactly because the
recursive make does not have all dependency information available).

Cheers,
Ralf