Re: flex 2.5.21 released

[Bruce Lilly]

W. L. Estes wrote:

> Bruce, automake is a separate program. It's not included because we're
> only interested in its output. If you want to modify flex, then you
> have to buy into the tools we use to build it.

I know that automake is separate.  My interest in posting
the patch to Makefile.in was not to modify flex per se,
but to share a method for getting legible documentation.
But I don't have the time to embark on a 4-day project
to do so.

> Believe me, Bruce, that's the way you want it. (You, in fact,
> complained when all there was was a cvs snapshot and you had to have a
> whole host of tools to get flex to build.)

Yes, and that was IIRC an automake problem; it first
required one specific version of one tool, then
another, and another. By the time it insisted on the
4th specific version of a tool which I rarely use --
and only 0.001 version later than what I already had
available, I had to abandon it as it was taking too
much time and effort.

> Bruce, you patch Makefile.am as best you can--Makefile.am works more
> or less like a makefile.

I've looked at the file -- I can't see anything in it
that looks like it gets translated to SUFFIXES or
suffix rules, which is what I needed to do.