Prof Brian D Ripley writes:
On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Thomas Hoffmann wrote:
As the subject says, one has
SUBDIRS = X11 gnome internet lapack vfonts
MODULES = $(R_GUIS) internet lapack vfonts
It is my understanding, that there is a 1:1 correspondence between
subdirs and modules. If this were true, then one could use one of
both in all places. Or do I overlook something here?
Not all R_GUIS might be supported: gnome often is not. So there is
on my Solaris system a gnome subdir but no gnome module.
Your assumption of a 1:1 correspondence is incorrect for my system, which
has
in $(top_builddir)/Makeconf.
MODULES is used for shared libraries to be made (to be dynamically
loaded). SUBDIRS is used for things to be cleaned and to be
distributed.
One could argue that MODULES should be used for things to be cleaned,
*BUT* that might have be changed by a re-configure, so SUBDIRS looks
safer.
[I'm not the author of any of this, and the choices made look right to
me.]