Re: .py.in? _PYTHON?

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
   just a few quick comments:

On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 11:10:35AM +0100, David Lee wrote:
> Looking deeper, I discovered "_PYTHON" primary (which hadn't existed when
> we started with automake, and wasn't in the "Goat Book").

as you surely know, the Goat Book describes Automake 1.4; many things
changed in Automake since then.

>    thing_SCRIPTS = one.py two.py three.py
> to:
>    thing_PYTHON = one.py two.py three.py

*_PYTHON files are distributed by default, unlike *_SCRIPTS.
So it would have been more appropriate to use
    nodist_thing_PYTHON = one.py ...

> But a development colleague reported shortly afterwards that the Makefile
> was no longer updating the ".py" from his changed ".py.in".  (I verified
> this with my own automake, version 1.8.3)

The corrent version is 1.9.6, could you please try it?
Or better yet, could you update Autoconf to 2.60, which was released
a month agon, and then use the CVS version of Automake?

> Looking at the generated "Makefile" suggests that "all-am:" target doesn't
> include things from the "_PYTHON" primary (unlike from "_SCRIPTS").

If the *.py file is not updated by `make all', it is, IMHO, a bug in 
Automake; please tell us what you found out with the new version(s).

As a workaround, you can add:
all-local: $(nodist_thing_PYTHON)

But ieven with this bug, the *.py files should be prerequisites for
`install', so they should be updated before tey are installed.

Looking forward to hear more,
        Stepan Kasal