best practices regarding pulling together components across directories

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i'm curious about best practices advice in the following situation:

===== start

vpath *.c dir1
vpath *.c dir2
vpath *.c dirn
vpath *.o objdir1
vpath *.o objdir2

-include (lots of .d names here)

all: target
        lots of *.o references here

===== end

  i was just handed a Makefile with that structure and, yes, it works
fine.  however, given the number of "vpath" definitions, there's no
question that, as you read the Makefile to get a feeling for where all
the bits and pieces come from, it can sometimes be confusing to know
the origin of each component.  yes, vpath is a terrifically useful
feature, but it also annoyingly obscures from *where* each component
comes from since, naturally, it just says, "hey, here's a bunch of
places to go look for stuff if you need it."

  is there a standard for this sort of thing?  i have no problem with
being more verbose if it makes the Makefile clearer.  it is, of
course, possible to hard-code the names of each of those components
but that's taking things to the other extreme.

  advice?  is there a happy medium that is understood in the make
community as the cleanest way to do this?  thanks.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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