Running a plain ./config.status at top level

[Akim Demaille]

I would like to suggest the following patch, which solves two
different issues:

1. When you change configure.ac and run make in a deep hierarchy it
   takes hours to regenerate all the Makefiles from Makefile.ins.

2. When there are actions that Automake doesn't know about
   (AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS creating files), they never get a chance of
   being run.

The idea is that we should probably run plain ./config.status at the
top level update of Makefile.

Hm...  Of course, I can't cvs diff :(  I don't have an Internet access
for the time being.  Here is a hand written patch:

am/lib/am % diff -u configure.am.orig configure.am               nostromo Err 1
--- configure.am.orig   2003-04-08 18:01:33.000000000 +0200
+++ configure.am        2003-04-08 18:01:14.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ## automake - create Makefile.in from Makefile.am
-## Copyright 2001
+## Copyright (C) 2001, 2003
 ## Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 
 ## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
@@ -30,7 +30,11 @@
 %MAKEFILE%: %MAINTAINER-MODE% %MAKEFILE-IN% %MAKEFILE-DEPS% 
$(top_builddir)/config.status
 ## FIXME: $(am__depfiles_maybe) lets us re-run the rule to create the
 ## .P files.  Ideally we wouldn't have to do this by hand.
+if %?TOPDIR_P%
+       $(SHELL) ./config.status $(am__depfiles_maybe)
+else !%?TOPDIR_P%
        cd $(top_builddir) && $(SHELL) ./config.status %CONFIG-MAKEFILE% 
$(am__depfiles_maybe)
+endif !%?TOPDIR_P%
 
 ## --------------------------- ##
 ## config.status & configure.  ##


If the idea is accepted, I'll write the ChangeLog etc.  The test suite
is currently being run.