built stuff depending on Makefile: AUTOMAKE_OPTION?

[Harlan Stenn]

If I am not mistaken, at the moment the targets built in an automake-generated
Makefile do not depend on the Makefile.

Sometimes this is good.

Sometimes this is bad.

For example, in a large project where it can be Time Consuming to rebuild
the entire package from scratch, having this capability would be Good, as
when doing a checkout from a source repository an updated Makefile.am would
trigger a rebuild of all of the items in that directory.

If automake kept track of what might be built in a given Makefile then
would a simple AUTOMAKE_OPTION be all that is required to have automake
add a line that said:

 $(BUILT_THINGS): Makefile

and perhaps this would do the trick?

I'd like to discuss this here before I open a gnats(?) item on it.

H