Re: install to top_builddir

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Reuben,

* Reuben Hawkins wrote on Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 05:51:52AM CEST:
> In my build process, I need to have all the libraries copied to
> $(top_builddir)/lib and all the bins to $(top_builddir)/bin and headers,

Can you explain to us why you would need that to be done?

> etc...  Is there some de facto standard what to do this with automake?

Extending the 'all' target can be done with the 'all-local' target.
It (and any prerequisites it may have) are updated at 'make all' time
(but the order in which it is run wrt. other prerequisites of 'all' is
undefined in the parallel make case.

> What I have now at the end of each of my Makefile.am's (which isn't doing
> exactly what I want, but before I put more effort into it, I thought I'd ask
> here) is...
> 
> publish:
>         $(MAKE) install DESTDIR="$(abs_builddir)/$(top_builddir)"
> 
> all: am-all publish

You shouldn't override all.  Use something like

all-local: publish

but also make 'publish' depend upon all files you are about to install,
because otherwise parallel make may introduce ugly races with your two
make instances competing for each other in updating them.

Your publish rule commands have problems too: you don't override prefix,
so that stuff ends up below $(abs_builddir)/$(top_builddir)$(prefix).
That doesn't make sense to me (but since you don't explain what you
actually need to do, I'm not sure).  I'd have expected something like
  $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) install DESTDIR= prefix="$(abs_top_builddir)"

As to motivation: I suspect you want to reuse code for finding
installed stuff similarly when looking for uninstalled stuff.
It is often possible to make this easier by laying out the build
tree similarly to the install tree (or multiple install trees,
for large projects).  But without more details, it's hard to give
better advice.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf