Re: AM_CONDITIONAL not working properly, or I just don't understand :-(

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Gary V. Vaughan wrote:

> Yeah, that is pretty sucky.  What about installing the modules to a 
> bogus directory (in the build tree?) and then removing that directory?
>
>     if !INSTALL_LIBS
>     pkglibdir = $(top_builddir)/_noinst
>     install-exec-hook:
>         @echo "pruning statically linked modules"
>         rm -rf $(pkglibdir)
>     endif

This didn't work, because pkglibdir is a relative path when you are 
building in a separate object directory, and then libtool can't accept 
that path for an --rpath option.

> Or, if you give the modules their own Makefile.am, you might be able to 
> redefine INSTALL and mkinstalldirs to neuter the install rules:
>
>     if !INSTALL_LIBS
>     INSTALL=:
>     mkinstalldirs=:
>     endif

This may have worked, but automake complained about the double target 
definition, and I'm not sure I could guarantee that they would always 
be defined in the proper order.

In the end, coupled with a small patch to ltmain.sh (posted to the 
libtool list) to allow --silent to _actually_ be --silent, I put this 
in the top-level Makefile.am:

install-data-hook:
        rm -rf $(includedir)
install-exec-hook:
        rm -rf $(pkglibdir)
        rm -rf $(libdir)/[lib-name]

It works, and I can live with the extra install/remove activity. Most 
people that build this statically likely aren't going to use "make 
install" anyway, they'll just copy the static binary out of the build 
directory and put it wherever they want.

Thanks for all your help, Gary, I appreciate the assistance. Hopefully 
you'll get some time to review the patches I posted to the libtool 
list to see if those make sense for the main distribution.