Hurd source tree; inter-directory dependencies

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hi!

I'm currently working on converting the Hurd's home brewn built system to
automake; i.e. finish the work Jeff Bailey started 3 1/2 years ago.


The Hurd source tree roughly looks like this:

[hurd]/
        liba
        libb
        libc
        proga
        progb

`liba' is self contained.  `libb' depends on `liba'.  `libc' depends on
`liba' and `libb'.  `proga' depends on `libb' and `progb' on `liba',
`libb' and `libc'.  Every directory has its own `Makefile', which
`include's a top level `Makeconf' containing frequently used routines.


In the old build system we had the very conventient feature that you
could `make progb' from the top level build directory and it would
automagically first build the libraries `progb' depends on (as specified
by a variable in `progb/Makefile').

The rationale behind this: often you don't want to build the whole tree,
but only specific parts of it.


Is it possible to achieve this functionality using standard measures of
automake?  Reading its documentation and searching through the list
archives didn't yield utilizable results so far.

Would switching to a non-recursive build layout solve this problem?

Keeping the current per-directory `Makefile.am's, I can imagine doing
some hackery (and already have some ideas about it) in the top level
`Makefile.am', but I first wanted to be sure that it didn't exist
already.


Regards,
 Thomas