i have a new feature. anybody want it?

[Jay G. Scott]

TO:  address@hidden
RE:  my unsolicited "enhancement"

hi,

while working on GAMESS (a quantum chemistry program) i ran in
to a situation that made it clear that individual source files
needed to be compiled with different optimization options.
automake doesn't support that.  but i wanted it, so i cobbled
it together.  for the moment, it's called OFLAGS for Optimization
FLAGS.

in my Makefile.am you see this:

address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@
address@hidden@

what that means is that the file in the "." directory
(for the top line, it is)
        mcqdpt.f
the compilation will use the flags specified by @mcqdpt_OFLAGS@
(naturally, set up by the configure script).  something like this:
        $(FC) @mcqdpt_OFLAGS@ mcqdpt.f
i'm pretty sure i did the right thing in that i changed the files
in automake-1.9.3/share/automake-1.9/am to do the right thing.
the main automake program changed, too.

i didn't support doing this for files not in the local directory.
i wasn't sure i had traced out all of that logic properly, for one
thing, and i didn't need it, for another.  and i didn't support
one file in two languages, like:  abc.f and abc.c.  at the time
i wondered about doing those things and rejected them.

i did this several months ago.  i submitted it to the "gamess" master
programmer (whatever his title is) but he didn't want to use it.  he wants
to stick w/ his C-shell scripts and not use the autotools.  (that's his
biz, i guess.)  so nothing actually came of what i did.

is this worth adding?

j.