A release with LIBOBJDIR?

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
  current CVS versions of Autoconf and Automake use make variable
LIBOBJDIR, to enable using AC_LIBOBJ with non-recursive makefiles.

I think this is not the best possible solution to the problem.
I hoped to submit an alternative solution, which would mean that
LIBOBJDIR could have beed removed then.  
It became clear that the solution won't be available before the
release of Autoconf 2.60 and Automake 1.10.

But if we release versions with LIBOBJDIR, we will be bounded to
support it in future releases, even in case that it will become
redundant.

That is why I'd like to ask you to consider marking the feature
as experimental, and adding a warning that it may disappear in
future releases.

(Below are some details about the alternative solution I have in mind.)

Have a nice day,
        Stepan

--------------------------------------
The sketch of the alternative solution
--------------------------------------

It is often requested that AC_LIBOBJ should support more than one
libobj directory.  (Examples were presented which show how this
feature would make some projects more manageable.)

I think that the best way to implement this is let Autoconf collect
all the objects and then filter them for various output files.

Note that we already have variables which have different values
in different output files, eg. top_srcdir.  Note also that Autoconf
already does some manipulation with LIBOBJS before writing output
files, so this is not new either.

I imagine that for each declared libobj subdirectory, Autoconf would
filter out everything but the objects from that directory.  And for
the top-level makefile, LIBOBJS would contain all the objects, with
their relative path.

As you can see, this would also solve the problemof non-recursive
makefiles, rendering LIBOBJDIR redundant.