[Q] Absent directories and automake

[zaufi]

Hi all!

I have little 'strange' (from automake's point of view :) configuration:
in my CVS there is 2 modules present: mylib and mylib-tests -- 2nd is 
interested for developers (of mylib) only, while mylib is available for 
public (usual users) by `cvs co mylib` command. Developers of mylib may 
checkout mylib and tests at once by `cvs co mylib-devel` where is mylib-devel 
is a special CVS module to checkout both modules: mylib module into 'mylib' 
directory and mylib-tests into 'mylib/tests' directory. So directory 
$(top_srcdir)/tests present only in "developer's checkouts"...

In my configure script I have the following:

 #... snip ...
 AM_MAINTAINER_MODE
 #...
 if test "x$USE_MAINTAINER_MODE" = "xyes"; then
 AC_CONFIG_FILES([\
     tests/Makefile \
     ...
  ])
 fi

and in top level Makefile.am:

  if MAINTAINER_MODE
      SUBDIRS += tests
  endif


+ and some other tricks dependend on USE_MAINTAINER_MODE and MAINTAINER_MODE 
condition in Makefiles.am...

BUT the problem is: for usual checkouts (when no tests/ directory appear after 
checkout) my bootstrap script fails on automake execution with following:

Makefile.am:7: required directory ./tests does not exist

Is there is any way to avoid this behaviour of automake? If no, maybe it is 
reasonable to allow user to control what files maybe absent and prevent (by 
some automake option) to issue an error? I found that such configuration is 
quite suitable for my project but currently I can't implement it :(((
Any objections why it can't be implemented (suppressed)??

Regards.
Alexander