Re: specifying workbook dir for dist-hook

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Marius Vollmer <address@hidden>
   Date: 07 Apr 2002 15:04:13 +0200

   Is this a real fix?  As far as I can see, it only works 'accidentally'
   when using GNU make.  Do we want to require GNU make?

the mechanisms and times are as follows:

* automake scanning happens at autogen.sh time.  automake instantiates a
  Makefile.in from templates, handling "include" directives by diverting
  (recursively) scanning to the included file and omitting the directive
  in the output, and handling "if MAINTAINER_MODE" sections by prefixing
  "@MAINTAINER_MODE_TRUE@" to makefile var definitions (and using other
  generally portable constructs).

* expansion of @MAINTAINER_MODE_TRUE@ happens at configure time.
  configure creates portable Makefile from portable Makefile.in, etc.

* execution of Makefile actions happens at make time by whichever
  make(1) is either available on the system or specified by the user.

here, the root cause of the bug seems to lie in how automake handles
nested "if MAINTAINER_MODE" sections.

because we see different behaviors in different versions of automake and
because the documentation does not explicitly support our funky usage, i
figured that the most slackful fix would be to "don't do that"; the
nature of the fix is to fall back on well-supported (documented, stable)
automake features and avoid conflating them.

you'll also note from point 1 above that none of this has anything to do
w/ GNU make (thankfully :-).

thi