That's sad news. Maybe they would would consider a well-written patch; I have to try.
If you want to remain sane, don't look at their makefiles. :-)
That was to mean, that there are good reasons, when the build system becomes complex, to support only builddir != srcdir. Programs that do not support it are buggy and should be reported to the author.(Note that GCC 4.1.x is just building with builddir != srcdir under your feet).That's perfectly good for me.
Paolo
