Re: Fwd: Making only some targets on cross-compilation

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Philip A. Prindeville wrote on Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 01:32:33AM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >   echo "SUBDIRS = src utils" | make -f Makefile -f -

> Yeah, I thought about that or some "makefile.wrapper" like:
> 
> SUBDIRS=src utils
> include Makefile

That wouldn't work.  You've got the order of your lines wrong.

> That said, I have to believe that this is a broad/generic enough issue
> that people must run into it elsewhere, and was wondering if it's worth
> including a fix in the generated Makefiles from automake to not inherit
> SUBDIRS into sub-makes from the parent.

Cross compilation is a broad/generic enough issue that package authors
adjust their packages to allow to build even in that case.  That said,
not building parts of the tree is usually chosen at configure time, not
at make time, precisely because portable make is such an inflexible
beast.

> Passing overriding values via the command-line *is* a basic capability
> in gmake, so if automake is to be robust is should probably do the right
> thing in all cases (or all reasonable cases).

I'm not sure you understand.  Passing overriding values is sufficiently
non-portable to non-GNU make implementations (see the Autoconf manual
section on make portability), and the most common need for override is
one that happens in *all* makefiles and not just the toplevel one, that
trying to support something from automake which isn't really supported
portably from make seems weird.  Besides, I just gave you a working
command line.

Cheers,
Ralf