The most non-productive aspect I have found when using Automake to build projects in subdirectories is that it is very tedious to translate '/'s (and other special characters) in paths and filenames to '_' when defining target parameters. The situation becomes worse with non-recursive approaches than the recursive approach. The carrying forward of this Automake approach to target parameter names makes the Makefile much more difficult to maintain than it should be since both non-translated and translated paths must be maintained in the Makefile and there is ambiguity.
Perhaps it is time for Automake to re-assess this design decision. If the capability is added to perform automatic path/filename translation, then Automake can do the transformations for the user so that the user never needs to deal with translated paths. The path translation should know how to expand macros so that target parameter names can be built from macro components. In other words, dealing with junk like apps_build_postgres_src_build_postgres_SOURCES is very tiring and failure prone. Is there a reason why it can't simply be apps/build-postgres/src/build-postgres_SOURCES ? Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen
