Re: Tests, demos, and all that

[Karl Nelson <kenelson ece ucdavis edu>]

> I think makefile.am would be overkill for these examples. All the
> makefiles are extremely simple and I've never had a report of any
> problems with them across platforms.
> 
> Flattening the directory structure to artificially add automake
> support would be a lose, IMHO. It just doesn't seem to be required.
> There may be a requirement to makefile.in (yes, thats what I meant)
> the top-level examples makefile, but I'm not sure.

Perhaps you should look at the system which Gtk-- is using for
their examples.  The configure builds a example.conf file
which contains all the makefile variables to compile the 
examples.  The examples are then in individual directories
with their associated files and a very simple Makefile.  
If an install is done for placing the examples in a special
place for an rpm file, the rpm maintainer just replaces the
examples.conf file with one with variables more approprate
for a demo install.

We switched to this from the pure automake like system
because the automake took too long to rerun (making development
a pain) and because not using libtool for the examples
forced installations (also making developing a pain).

This simplified our lives a good bit.  And thus I would
recommend it.  I would be happy to provide further details.

--Karl