Re: Atomic control of subdirectories with recursive automake

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 05:11:57PM -0600, Brian wrote:
> source file was main.c and bin_PROGRAMS = hello helloDebug

set also
        helloDebug_CPPFLAGS = -DDEBUG
and/or
        helloDebug_CFLAGS = -g

in the Makefile.

> [...] but there was no "autorenaming" so to speak.

These so called "per-target options" enable "autorenaming"; you'll have
hello-main.o and helloDebug-main.o.

> Additionally, at configure time an option such as --enable-debug
> should be available, and if set, should create an additional debug version
> of each subdirectory using the same source files

in configure.ac, use
        AM_CONDITIONAL([ENABLE_DEBUG], [test "x$enable_debug" = xyes])

and in the appropriate Makefile.am:

        bin_PROGRAMS = hello
        if ENABLE_DEBUG
          bin_PROGRAMS += helloDebug
        endif

No need to make the per-target option assignments optional, if you don't
mind that the renaming will happen every time.

>    - Optionally make subdirectories individually 

This is a standard feature; targets "all" and similar work in each Makefile.

>     - Pass flags from configure all the way to individual debug builds (I 
>    know how to enable the flags, just now how to make sure they make it all 
> the 
>    way down)

That's the basic function of Autotools: AC_SUBST([VARIABLE],...)
and then you have $(VARIABLE) in your Makefile.am.
But, actually, you don't need this here, the one bit carried by the conditional
is enough, the flags are in the Makefile.am.

HTH,
        Stepan Kasal