How to speed up 'automake'

[R. Diez]

Hi all:

I have this cross-compiling Autoconf/Automake project:

https://github.com/rdiez/JtagDue/tree/master/Project

This is just an example project, I have others that are bigger, and I rebuild 
many of them automatically overnight. That is why I am looking at speeding up 
the Autotools steps.

When I run this command, I get the following trace:

time automake --verbose --warnings=all --add-missing --copy

automake: thread 0: running WARNINGS=none autoconf 
--trace=AC_CANONICAL_BUILD:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CANONICAL_HOST:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CANONICAL_TARGET:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CONFIG_FILES:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CONFIG_HEADERS:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CONFIG_LIBOBJ_DIR:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_CONFIG_LINKS:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_FC_SRCEXT:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_INIT:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_LIBSOURCE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_REQUIRE_AUX_FILE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AC_SUBST_TRACE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_AUTOMAKE_VERSION:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_CONDITIONAL:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_EXTRA_RECURSIVE_TARGETS:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_GNU_GETTEXT:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_GNU_GETTEXT_INTL_SUBDIR:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_MAINTAINER_MODE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_PROG_AR:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=AM_PROG_MKDIR_P:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=LT_SUPPORTED_TAG:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=_AM_COND_ELSE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=_AM_COND_ENDIF:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=_AM_COND_IF:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=_AM_SUBST_NOTMAKE:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=_LT_AC_TAGCONFIG:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=m4_include:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=m4_sinclude:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}% 
--trace=sinclude:\$f:\$l::\$d::\$n::\${::}%
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/header-vars.am
automake: thread 0: reading Makefile.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/configure.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/progs.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/libs.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/library.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/program.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/compile.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/depend.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/depend2.am
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .S become .o
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .S become .obj
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/lang-compile.am
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .c become .o
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .c become .obj
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .cpp become .o
automake: thread 0: Sources ending in .cpp become .obj
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/texinfos.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/data.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/inst-vars.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/tags.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/distdir.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/footer.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/install.am
automake: thread 0: reading 
/home/rdiez/rdiez/LocalSoftware/Autotools/autoconf-2.71-automake-1.16.5-libtool-2.4.6-bin/share/automake-1.16/am/clean.am
automake: thread 0: creating Makefile.in

real    0m0,684s
user    0m0,621s
sys     0m0,085s

It takes almost 0.7 seconds to generate the makefile for a rather small 
project: around 50 .c and .cpp files, some of them in a library, no libtool or 
anything fancy. Larger projects take longer.

Is there a way to speed 'automake' up?

Thanks in advance,
  rdiez