Re: Automatic regeneration of libtool

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz <adl at src dot lip6 dot fr>]

>>> "Gary" == Gary V Vaughan <gary@gnu.org> writes:

[...]

 Gary> Instead, I'd like to have LT_INIT perform the
 Gary> AC_SUBST([LIBTOOL_DEPS]), and Automake generate the
 Gary> following rule when libtool is in use:

 Gary> $(LIBTOOL): $(top_builddir)/config.status $(LIBTOOL_DEPS)
 Gary>         cd $(top_builddir) && $(SHELL) ./config.status $@

 Gary> Does that seem like a sensible thing to want?

What does LIBTOOL_DEPS contains?  It's unclear to me when
libtool needs to be rebuilt and how me managed without such rule
so far.  Except in the Libtool package itself, I believe
libtool.m4 does change when ltmain.sh changes, doesn't it?  So
libtool would get updated as a side-effect of
rebuilding/rerunning configure.

I have a small problem with using $(LIBTOOL) as a target of a rule,
because many people have overwritten LIBTOOL in they Makefile.am
to insert a --tag option.

Also such a rule would be triggered only if something depends on
$(LIBTOOL), which I believe is not the case (same problem with
--tag here).  Is such a dependency desirable?  IOW should every
libtool target be recompiled whenever config.status changes?
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz