Re: monolithic Makefile.am

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Boulton <address@hidden> writes:

Richard> I split mine up into sub-files, one in each directory, using
Richard> "include".

This sounds good.

Richard> Each subMake.am must add itself to EXTRA_DIST.  Also, all
Richard> paths inside subMake.am have to be relative to the top
Richard> Makefile.  Variables which may have entries added in several
Richard> places (such as CFLAGS) are set to an empty value in
Richard> Makefile.am, and appended to in subMake.am's.

Long term I'd like us to ease this sort of thing.

My working idea is to have a new `import' command which is like
`include' but understands about directory structure.  So for instance
it would know that `bin_PROGRAMS = foo' in subdir would really mean
`bin_PROGRAMS = subdir/foo'.  Also all the normal targets would have
subdir versions, so you could invoke `make subdir/mostlyclean'.

There are a lot of details to solve.  And the implementation will be
hard, since it will touch basically everything.

Richard> I've not worked out a solution for letting each subMake.am
Richard> add something to a rule such as "install-local".

There isn't a good way right now.  Having a method to do this would be
good.  Could you submit a PR for it?

Tom