Re: Nonrecursive Makefile.am: Ensuring directory creation?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Jack,

* Jack Kelly wrote on Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 02:37:22PM CEST:
> I am writing a nonrecursive Makefile.am, and cannot find the
> recommended way of requiring that directories in the source tree have
> had their equivalents created in the build tree. This has led me to
> write rules like this:
> 
> 8<---
> doc/fake437-primitive.texi: doc/$(am__dirstamp)
> include/fake437/primitive.h; $(EXTRACT_TEXI)
> --->8
> 
> but I feel that using anything starting with $(am__) is asking for
> trouble by relying on internal details.

Right you are in assuming that.

Unfortunately, Automake doesn't yet provide a good API for directory
stamping yet.  You can easily use your own though, that don't interfere
with automake's stamps and rules:

  subdir/generated-file: subdir/my-dirstamp
        commands ...
  subdir/my-dirstamp:
        @$(MKDIR_P) subdir
        @: > $@
  DISTCLEANFILES += subdir/my-dirstamp

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf