the following will break on distclean aith automake 1.7.5: Makefile.am:
SUBDIRS=a AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = subdir-objects bin_PROGRAMS=foo foo_SOURCES=a/foo.cc a/Makefile.am bin_PROGRAMS=bar bar_SOURCES=bar.cc The failure is because subdirs are distcleaned first, and a/.deps is rm -rf'd before the top level makefile runs. Possible solutions include: distclean prefix first, not postfix. change the distclean process to not rm -rf the .deps dir. I don't have time to hack up a test case just yet... sorry. Cheers, Rob