Re: allowing users to add source files without rerunning the autotools?

[Bill Sacks]

Thank you all for your very helpful thoughts over the last day, especially to 
Miles for the example -- which looks quite promising! -- and Stefano for all 
your thoughts. I haven't had time to parse everything in detail yet, but I 
wanted to reply to let you know how much I appreciate your help!

Just to clarify / confirm a couple of points that have been raised:

>> This sort of thing is already well supported by Automake via Makefile
>> includes.  But it does require that automake be executed again.
> 
> Right, my intent is something that _doesn't_ require that, which can
> be handled entirely by the configure script.
> 
> [That's more or less the whole point of this thread, right?]

Right: we're trying to find a solution that does not require users to run 
automake / autoconf / etc.

> with this rule:
> 
>  $(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) -DIM_STUUPD=1 $<
> 
> you are losing some important features offered by automake -- most
> notably, the automatic dependency tracking and the configurable verbosity
> specification (silent-rules).

The loss of dependency tracking is not a big deal for us: most of our code is 
Fortran 90, for which automake doesn't generate dependencies anyway, and we can 
continue to use our own tool for building dependency lists.

Finally, to confirm: yes, we are assuming gnu make already, so introducing more 
gnu make-specific features isn't too bad.

This all makes me think that Miles's solution might work for us, but I'll have 
to look at it more closely in the next couple of days.

Thanks again,
Bill


On Jan 19, 2012, at 7:41 PM, Miles Bader wrote:

> 2012/1/20 Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden>:
>>> One interesting thing would be to add some simple automake feature to
>>> allow specifying this stuff explicitly via some interface
>>> (e.g. AM_EXTRA_SOURCE_FILES([blah.c barf.h]) in configure, or something
>>> like that).  That might make it possible to really do this stuff
>>> correctly without too much work for the developer, by letting him take
>>> advantage of some of the lower-level automake machinery.
>> 
>> This sort of thing is already well supported by Automake via Makefile
>> includes.  But it does require that automake be executed again.
> 
> Right, my intent is something that _doesn't_ require that, which can
> be handled entirely by the configure script.
> 
> [That's more or less the whole point of this thread, right?]
> 
> -miles
> 
> -- 
> Cat is power.  Cat is peace.
>