Re: Put GNU build system files in a subdirectory?

[Bob Rossi]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 06:52:32PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 04/24/2013 06:44 PM, Andy Tai wrote:
> > The GNU Build system is generally set up such that the Makefile.am,
> > configure.ac, etc. files are in the root directory of a software project.
> > Is there a way to place these files in a subdirectory of the root
> > directory, like this as an example:
> > 
> > ./
> >     README
> >     COPYING
> >     GNUBuild/
> >          Makefile.am
> >          configure
> >          ...
> >     include/
> >     src/
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > 
> > This may mean the user has to run configure from the subdirectory GNUBuild
> > as the initial step.  But the good thing is that this makes the source
> > files and build files separate and allows co-existence of different build
> > system support.. for example, CMake's CMakefile.txt can coexist with GNU
> > build files in a clean fashion
> 
> Sounds like you are asking a similar question to this:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2013-04/msg00014.html
> 
> with this answer of no (which really means: if YOU write the patches and
> prove that they are worth maintaining, then it could be added in the
> future, but no one else is interested in this unusual setup):
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2013-04/msg00021.html

Autotools is a great build system. However, after configuring it to
place as many files as possible in a subdirectory, it still takes up
87.5% of my projects root directory.

    aclocal.m4
    autom4te.cache
    build
    configure
    configure.ac
    Makefile.am
    Makefile.in
    src         <- This is my project

You think people are interested in the above [usual] setup?

Bob Rossi