over. (This is needed so we can fold a directory's
configure.in scripts into the parent's configure.in
without having to move all of its siblings as well into
- the parent directory's configure.in.)
+ the parent directory's configure.in. This is because if
+ the parent's configure.in file as a AC_CONFIG_DIRS macro,
+ it gets included into all the $(SUBDIRS) macro of *all*
+ of its generated makefiles, and this is wrong for all
+ but the Makefile.in of the parent directory. For example,
+ if the configure.in in src/appl contains
+ AC_CONFIG_DIRS(bsd telnet gssftp), and that configure
+ script also generates the Makefile.in for src/appl/sample,
+ then SUBDIRS will contain "bsd telnet gssftp" plus
+ whatever LOCAL_SUBDIRS is defined to contain. This
+ doesn't work. So instead of defining LOCAL_SUBDIRS,
+ the Makefile.in in src/appl/sample defines MY_SUBDIRS,
+ which completely overrides the SUBDIRS macro.
+ Eventually, we should replace all of the LOCAL_SUBDIRS
+ definitions in the Makefile.in's with MY_SUBDIRS, and
+ add MY_SUBDIRS definitions into all Makefile.in's that
+ don't currently have then, and depend on
+ AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS to insert the right magic value into
+ SUBDIRS. At that point, we can get rid of the SUBDIR
+ definition in pre.in, and remove this test from
+ post.in which tests of MY_SUBDIRS and uses it in
+ preference to SUBDIRS, and simply always use MY_SUBDIRS.)
1998-05-27 Theodore Ts'o <tytso@rsts-11.mit.edu>