[PPL-devel] Configure substitutions are not allowed in _SOURCES variables

[Roberto Bagnara]

Hi there,

I desperately need a way out this limitation of Automake.

The problem is as follows: the Parma Polyhedra Library
(http://www.cs.unipr.it/ppl/) provides foreign interfaces
(C, OCaml, Prolog and Java) to a number of abstract domains.
The abstract domains that are interfaced are selectable
at configure time, and can be (literally) hundreds.
The C++ code for the interfaces is automatically generated
and we used to put it all in one file.  However, this
poses serious problems as the compilation of that (possibly
gigantic) file easily causes GCC to consume gigabytes of
main memory.  We have now modified the generator so as to
generate one C++ source per domain;  we would like to compile
all these files separately and and to put all the corresponding
objects into a library.

Using the solution outlined in the Automake manual
(i.e., using conditionals) would cause us to write enormous
Makefile.am files which would be a maintenance nightmare.
That is, now everything is automated; if we use a long
chain of conditionals we would have to maintain consistency
by hand.

Is there any other possibility?
All the best,

    Roberto

-- 
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara at cs.unipr.it