I am helpin maintain the automake/autoconf scripts for a project. The
structure we have right now works great when you run "make" at the root
directory of the source tree. The developers want to know if there is a
way to start with a clean tree that has had "./configure" runned on it
and start compiling in a subdirectory? The reason is that a sound
developer would like to test their changes on a clean checkout from CVS
but do want to compile the other directories the root. If we had a tree
like:
/project_Buzz/A
/B
/C
/D
...
/Z
If the developer was only interested in lets say directory 'Z'. Then
because our makefile.am is written with 'Z' as the last directory in the
SUBDIRS the develop has a long time to wait until theirs is built. If it
were possible to start building in 'Z' then it may take considerably
less time to build than a full make job. Directory 'Z' might only depend
on a few libraries in 'A', 'G' and 'R'. Four directories is nicer than
24 from a developers point of view.
I hope this explains what I am looking at for a solution.
Stephen