AM_CFLAGS and %reldir%

[Thomas Martitz]

Hello,


when transitioning a project to non-recursive Automake, using %reldir%, 
you lose the ability to define per-directory AM_{CPP,C,CXX,LD}FLAGS.

With recursive Automake, you can simply set AM_CFLAGS in each 
Makefile.am. Attempting the same in a non-recursive setup would modify 
the single, global AM_CFLAGS, which may not be desirable.

The only solution seems to be to heavily expand the fragments:

AM_CFLAGS = -g

bin_PROGRAMS = foo bar baz

becomes

bin_PROGRAMS += %D%/foo %D%/bar %D%/baz

%C_foo_CFLAGS = -g

%C_bar_CFLAGS = -g

%C_baz_CFLAGS = -g

(repeat for AM_CPPFLAGS, AM_CXXFLAGS, AM_LDFLAGS).

This gets unwieldy in cases of many programs and libraries. As a side 
effect, Automake will emit explicit rules, making the Makefile even 
larger, though that's not much of a problem I think and is probably not 
avoidable.

Is there any other solution available? I have tried to define 
directory-level AM_CFLAGS, like

AM_%C%_CFLAGS = -g

(applying to all targets that start with %C% after expanding) but they 
are not used.


If there are no other solutions, would the above idea considered if 
someone posted a patch?

Best regards.