>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> writes:

Tom> I am happy to implement this, but it will be a major regression for
Tom> folks not using GNU make.

Here is a new patch.

Again, I made this against the Python branch.  Sorry about that, but I
have uncommitted patches in my trunk tree and didn't want to mess with
it.

This one works by overriding selected variables and adding new rules
using a GNUmakefile.  While somewhat more obscure than AM_CONDITIONAL,
this one has the nice property that the user can switch between GNU
make and other makes without needing to re-run configure.

IMO this patch is uglier than the previous.  For one thing I had to
recreate explicit rules for all the objects whose source files are in
subdirs.

I only have GNU make.  So, I don't actually know that this works for
non-GNU makes.  Mark, maybe you could try it out?

Let me know what you think of this.  If it looks ok-ish I will clean
it up and submit it for real.

Tom