Autotools and multiple targets

[Bartov, Asaf]

Hello.

I'm converting a big project from Windows into Unix, and my strategy is
to generate autotools inputs (configure.ac and Makefile.am files) from
Microsoft Visual C++ project files.

Typical Microsoft projects have multiple targets, e.g. "Debug" and
"Release" at the very least.  In my project's case, there are four
targets (Debug/Release for each of two target Apache versions).

I was wondering whether you'd be able to point me at a best-practice
document on how to achieve this (i.e. a single Makefile.am building any
or all of four targets) generically.  For a given set of source files, I
want four configurations (i.e. combinations of CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, include
dirs) expressed in a single Makefile.

I've been perusing the autotools manual, and I have a working autotools
project (autoconf, automake, and libtool), but I'm not sure how to
extend it to multiple targets.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to say in a source directory:

% make

To make all four targets, and:

% make Debug_2.0

To make the 'Debug_2.0' target only.

If you can point me at such a document, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks in advance,

        Asaf Bartov