Re: [bug-gnulib] [patch] feature enhancement for gnulib-tool

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Charles,

Charles Wilson wrote:
> When you call gnulib-tool --import/--update, it autogenerates a 
> Makefile.am for the library.  Sometimes it is desirable to customize 
> that Makefile's behavior -- but those customizations will be lost upon 
> the next --update.

Thanks for working on this. It appears that we need first to improve the
documentation of the existing possibilities. Because you may not have
noticed that
  - nearly the same customizations are available through the --makefile-name
    option; it allows you to generate a file called, say, Makefile.gnulib,
    that you include from your entirely hand-written Makefile.am,
  - a lot of customizations are also possible by defining a fake module
    of yours, with an empty file list, just for the purpose of putting some
    automake statements into its 'Makefile.am' section. And then use gnulib's
    --local-dir option.

> Makefile.am.top
> Makefile.am.before
> Makefile.am.after
> Makefile.am.bottom

Why are two files (Makefile.am.top, Makefile.am.bottom) not sufficient?
gnulib-tool's existing --makefile-name option acts as if one would specify
Makefile.am.top and Makefile.am.bottom files, therefore I'd like to know what
you can _not_ do with it?

Bruno