subdir-objects and sources outside of subtree

[Ralf Corsepius]

Hi,

Is this a bug or feature?

Given this Makefile.am (in top_srcdir):

noinst_LIBRARIES = libfoo.a
libfoo_a_SOURCES = \
foo.c \
../bar/bar.c \
$(top_srcdir)/../baz/baz.c

automake accepts this without any complaint.

Without having subdir-objects in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS, bar.c and baz.c are
treated like VPATH builds, and the Makefile.in contains rules to build
bar.(OBJEXT) rsp. baz.(OBJEXT).

However, if setting subdir-objects in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS, weird things are
happening:

Automake tries to build

1)
../bar/bar.$(OBJEXT): ../bar/bar.c
i.e. it tries to build to outside of the source tree.
and
$(top_srcdir)/../shared/baz.$(OBJEXT): $(top_srcdir)/../shared/baz.c
i.e. similar to bar, but it into the srcdir !!!!

However before, it can try to build there, ...

2) It creates two directories
bar/.deps
\$\(top_srcdir\)
../baz/.deps

... and dep-tracking is misbehaving

AFAIU, depcomp-initialization (depfiles) creates these directories,
because something doesn't seem get the quotes right (I guess, it's yet
another case of "accommodating java $'s and breaking the shell" (<~) in
quoting).

Below is a tarball to reproduce the effects. Run configure and make from
the toplevel directory. The offending Makefile.am is in config-subdir
foo/

Ralf

autobug-0.5.tar.bz2
Description: application/bzip