erlang with automake

[Jean Parpaillon]

Hi all,
I am Jean Parpaillon, new on the mailing list and extensive user of
autotools.
I am now developing mostly with erlang and I'd like to use autotools as
well with my erlang projects. What's available today is:
- rebar[0]: a pure erlang solutions. External languages can be compiled
through hooks but conditional builds, options, etc (like provides
autoconf) is really limited.
- erlang.mk: a pure Makefile solutions. Basic usage: set some variables
and includes erlang.mk in your Makefile.
- autoconf erlang support: autoconf provides some macros for
getting/setting erlang build environment.

What I'd like would be to use autoconf + automake in my projects, as to
benefit from options, integration with other languages (my projects
includes C, Python, XSL, etc).

I am interested in contributing to automake but I would need:
- some entry points: I have read some .am files in [2] and I suppose I
would need to add rules in there but I don't see documentation on
internal automake APIs. I also suppose I would need to add language
declaration in [3].
- some guidance on how to design the erlang related rules wrt automake
ones. erlang platform comes with a precise project structure. Each
application has the following structure:
/src      -> source files
/ebin     -> build .beam files
/mibs     -> for MIBs, in case of SNMP application
/priv     -> other files

In case a software is made of several applications, each application,
with above structure, is put in /apps/app1, /apps/app2, etc directory.

Would it be acceptable to base the automake erlang rules on a single
Makefile per app with, for instance the following variables:
erlang_APP = myapp
myapp_MODULES = myapp.erl mymodule1.erl mymodule2.erl ...
...

Any help for starting would be welcome :)

Regards,
Jean

[0] https://github.com/rebar/rebar
[1] https://github.com/ninenines/erlang.mk 
[2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/automake.git/tree/lib/am 
[3] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/automake.git/tree/bin/automake.in 
-- 
Jean Parpaillon
Open Source Consultant
Phone: +33 6 30 10 92 86
im: address@hidden
skype: jean.parpaillon
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanparpaillon/en