I must say I don't understand very well why this patch is needed, but
it is. I found it back in the old code, which was doing it for
unconditionally defined sources, but not for conditionally defined
sources (which was a bug).
Now it works for both.
Index: ChangeLog
from Akim Demaille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* automake.in (&handle_source_transform): Fix pr72: don't define
$linker if there are no @files.
Index: automake.in
--- automake.in Sun, 11 Mar 2001 16:22:45 +0100 akim (am/f/39_automake.i 1.164 755)
+++ automake.in Sun, 11 Mar 2001 16:47:21 +0100 akim (am/f/39_automake.i 1.164 755)
@@ -1905,7 +1905,9 @@ sub handle_source_transform
my ($temp, @result) =
&handle_single_transform_list ($var, $one_file, $obj,
@files);
- $linker = $temp if $linker eq '';
+ # If there are no files to compile, don't require a linker (yet).
+ $linker ||= $temp
+ if @files;
# Define _OBJECTS conditionally.
&define_pretty_variable ($xpfx . $one_file . '_OBJECTS',