Makefile.am, ./autogen, linking, subdirs and ___NOT___ .a or .la files

["Jarne Cook" <j cook au toast com>]

look every body  ... this is beyond ridiculious

all I want to do is write a program ... but how can I do that when I cant get
./autogen to produce the proper makefiles.


Could someone tell me exactly how to do the following:

there is a program called GEditPlus (GEdit+)
This program is take the nice features that edit plus for windows has ...

the source tree will have a the following structure

editor/
    /src
        main.c          -- the main file that will produce main.o -> geditplus
        main.h          -- included by most source files to access the global
                            struct
        /menu           -- this directory contains all of the files that deal
                            with defining and implementing the menus and menu
                            calls
            menu.h      -- defines the menubars mainmenu_UI struct, includes
                            filemenu.h ... helpmenu.h
            menu.c      -- very little is in here ...
            filemenu.h  -- defines the file menu and its sub menus, and the
                            function prototypes
            filemenu.c  -- implements the functions defined in filemenu.h
            editmenu.h  -- defines the edit menu and its sub menus, and the
                            function prototypes
            editemenu.c -- implements the functions defined in editmenu.h
                .
                .
                .
            helpmenu.h  -- defines the help menu and the function prototypes
            helpmenu.c  -- implements the functions defined in helpmenu.h

Also for each directory (/editor, /editor/src, and /editor/src/menu, ... ) there
will be a file, among many others, called Makefile.am .   This file is supposed
to make it easier for the programmer by generating the makefiles (as everybody
should know).

now supposing that the Makefile.am contained the correct "directives" and
produced the proper Makefile to do the job that I want, then I should get the
following when I type make (assuming that the source files have no syntactic
errors):

gcc will compile editor/src/menu/filemenu.c and produce
editor/src/menu/filemenu.o

gcc will compile editor/src/menu/editemenu.c and produce
editor/src/menu/editmenu.o
                            .
                            .
                            .
gcc will compile editor/src/menu/helpmenu.c and produce
editor/src/menu/helpmenu.o

gcc will compile editor/src/menu/menu.c and link with filemenu.o, editmenu.o,
..., helpmenu.o and produce editor/src/menu/menu.o

gcc will compile editor/src/main.c and and link with editor/src/menu/menu.o and
produce editor/src/main.o

gcc will convert/compile (whatever it's called) main.o into geditplus


now we have ONE(1) executable file (and no libraries) that will run the program

you should notice that there is NO .a file, anywhere, ever, nowhere.  You got
that? Nowhere!

so after all that someone please tell me please what is supposed to go in the
Makefile.am files in the /src directory and the /src/menu directory



Jarne Cook

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