Re: only set variables in some Makefile.in's

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
  sorry that I post a followup to my previous mail.

I proposed that automake would generate file amvars.in, which would then
config.status transform to amvars.

Actually, there is no need for this.  We shuld have a specialized code
to generate file amvars.

This specialized code could also handle subsitutions which end with
backslash and multiline substitutions.
This would mean that there would be no longer any need for the hack
I proposed in
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2005-10/msg00018.html

The code could look like this:

rm -rf amvars
for ac_var in $ac_subst_vars; do
eval ac_val=\$$ac_var
sed '$!s/$/\\/;$s/\\$/& /;$s/^$/ /' >>amvars <<EOF
$ac_var = $ac_val
EOF
done

(... and, of course, we have to handle AM_SUBST_NOMAKE somehow.)

Yes, calling sed once for each AC_SUBSTed variable looks slow, but it
is _linear_, Ralf.  ;-)

Anyway, I think we can start with this implementation.

Later on, we can try whether something like

for ac_var in $ac_subst_vars; do echo $ac_var = @$ac_var@@\n@ |
        ./config.status --file=amvars:-

would speed things up.

Stepan