Re: Need help with cleaning up a working GNU Autotools setup

[Peter T. Breuer]

In comp.os.linux.development.system olbl03@student.bth.se wrote:

> 2) Create the build directory

> mkdir ../build

(I presume he's in the source). Well yes, that's what we/i told him to
do.

> 3) Add the following into the Makefile.ams of the subdirectories:

> AM_CPPFLAGS = -I $(RSD)

This is only a precompiler flag for where to look up includes. It
doesn't do anything about source, much less source in subdirs. This
won't do anything that I can see. One would generally already have had

   CPPFLAGS += -I $(TOPDIR)/include

(I'll write TOPDIR instead of RSD).

in ones Makefile (or Makefile.am/in, for all the differece it makes).

> 4) autoreconf
>     cd ../build
>     ../rsd/configure
>     make


This is again exactly what he has been told. Except 

   1. It's likely that the autoconf won't have added the VPATH =
   $(TOPDIR)/src to the Makefile that he needs.

   2.  There is no absolute guarantee at this point that he has a
   Makefile in this position now, but it is damn likely.

> Now the autotols suite has been used as it is meant to.

It hasn't been "used as it is meant to [be]" in any sense beyond the
ordinary use.  There was no use there of "autoconf" except to
build a configure file in the top level directory.

> And about the for i ..... hack suggested. In all honesty, why create a
> subshell and spawn/exit 80-100 make process?

Eh? You will have exactly as many processes as you NEED, WHEN you need
them. Are you under the impression that this is (a) expensive, or (b)
simultaneous? And I may add (c) unneccessary? You will always have
that number of makes. Try it and see. The  example you have given is
of compilation in ONE subdirectory. If you want to compile in 80
build dirs, you will do make in each of them. 

And may I add, that in each subdir of each build dir you will do a
make.




> If cross compilation is
> utilized for say 5 architectures and the project is big I think doing
> like above and executing make 5 times instead of 500 times is to
> prefer.

Idiot.

Plonk!

Peter