Usage

[John Darrington]

Recent versions of auto{make,conf} have become a pain to use.
Especially if you're using gettext too.

I think that some of these tools are trying to be just a little bit
too clever.

One particular problem is the way in which they modify each other's
input files. After a while, your Makefile.am looks like this:

SUBDIRS= intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4 
 intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4
  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m4  intl m
4  intl m4  intl m4  intl  intl m4 src intl po doc
EXTRA_DIST= config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath
 mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.r
path mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  conf
ig.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  
config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldi
rs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinsta
lldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mki
nstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath
 mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkinstalldirs  config.r
path mkinstalldirs  config.rpath mkins




And your configure.ac has a similar problem at AC_OUTPUT

Also, I've never been able to ensure that po/Makefile gets its
Makevars included properly --- Sometimes it does, sometimes not.  If
not, then one has to delete everything and try autoconf; automake ;
gettextize --- in random order until things work again.

It really starts to waste a lot of time, which is a shame, because a
few years ago, these tools were really usefull.