Re: New module gnu-make

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Eric,

* Eric Blake wrote on Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 02:17:46PM CET:
> I'm wondering if this feature could also be useful for projects that have
> a maintainer's GNUMakefile, but want to perform VPATH builds.  In other
> words, by using this module, could we add some sort of:
> 
> if GNU_MAKE
> include $(top_srcdir)/GNUMakefile
> endif
> 
> that automatically pulls in the GNUMakefile without having to symlink it
> into the VPATH build tree?

Well, with Automake's `include' it will just pull in the whole contents
of GNUMakefile into Makefile.in, which I guess isn't what you want.
Current Automake, however, ignores `-include'.  So I guess you can use

  if GNU_MAKE
  -include ...
  endif

However, so far the strategy has been to include `Makefile' from
`GNUmakefile', not the other way round.

Current Autoconf allows you to do this:
  AC_CONFIG_LINKS([GNUmakefile:GNUmakefile])

the only bit that's missing is that automake shouldn't remove
the original file upon
  make distclean

in a non-VPATH build.  Will fix.

Cheers,
Ralf