Re: Extending default suffix rules.

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Remcom

* Remco Bras wrote on Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 11:37:01PM CET:
> 
> as part of my work on GNU RPGE, I've had to 'extend' the automake suffix rule 
> for compiling .c files to .o ones.

Why, what limitation made this necessary, and how exactly do your
changed rules/macros look like?  Maybe it can be solved in a different
way without breakage.

> In the docs, I could not find a variable 
> containing the default suffix rule for this purpose, so I replaced the 
> entirity of it.

It's hard-coded in automake.in (see the register_language calls).

> However, doing so causes subtle breakage. In particular, 
> $(COMPILE) does not include the -c flag when using gcc, is this a deliberate 
> decision? 

Yes, that's how all the compile commands are factorized.  I guess
originally it was done to also facilitate that a compilation of a simple
program (without an intermediate object) can be done using $(COMPILE).
Note automake doesn't do this now.

Cheers,
Ralf