Re: AR reset in libs.am

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Andy" == Andy Helten <address@hidden> writes:

 Andy> Hello,
 Andy> I cross compile for VxWorks, so I set AR in my configure.ac based on the
 Andy> CPU type, however automake resets AR in each Makefile.in.  The culprit
 Andy> is libs.am which contains a line 'AR = ar'.  I could be using something
 Andy> incorrectly that ends up pulling libs.am into my Makefiles, however I
 Andy> still think libs.am should be smarter about setting AR.  In other words,
 Andy> libs.am should not set AR if it is already set.  Agree?

Is the ar for VxWorks special?  I've been crosscompiling a few
Automake projects (containing convenient librairies, hence using
$(AR)) for MingW and PalmOS, but the AR = ar setting never
interfere.

I believe that `ar' can treat the object files as binaries, only
`ranlib' needs to know the object format and has to be
$host-specific (but that just my impression and it may be wrong,
I've no deep knowledge of this area).  Maybe this is the reason
why Autoconf defines AC_PROG_RANLIB but not AC_PROG_AR.

Anyway, you can override the `AR = ar' setting from your
Makefile.am by adding the following line:
  AM = @AM@

This is likely to happen automatically when Automake starts to
use Autoconf's --trace.

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-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz