Q:

(Auto)make dependency across multiple makefiles

I am wondering if this is possible at all. Here is the situation:
My project uses automake to build its targets. The top-directory contains the usual configure.ac and Makefile.am. Amongst others, the Makefile.am contains a SUBDIRS variable listing the subdirectories, important for my question is the doc and include directory. The include directory's makefile looks like:
nobase_include_HEADERS = <lot-of-headers>

so it basically installs the headers. The makefile in doc is supposed to generate html documentation out of those files:
doxygen-stamp: Doxyfile
    $(DOXYGEN) $<
    echo "timestamp for Doxyfile" > $@

all-local: doxygen-stamp

Everything works fine so far, but if I change any of the headers in include the documentation is still up-to-date - because I did not list them as dependencies. What I would like to have is to have a doxygen-stamp-target that is rebuilt once the headers change without again listing all headers as dependencies. Is that possible and if it is, how?

A:

In this case, using a single Makefile would be hinted at — though you can split it up by using the automake include instruction (also see section 7.3 "An alternative approach to subdirectories" of the am manual). Therefore:
#can't use nobase_
include_HEADERS = include/foo.h include/bar.h

doc/doxygen-stamp: ${include_HEADERS}

