Using autotools build system / Building in a separate 'build' directory - c++

Question

I'm creating a software project and I wanted to use autotools to do the makefile and etc. script generation for me, I manually created Makefile.am and configure.in files, and I'm using the autogen.sh script from here. The problem comes when attempting to build the project in a separate 'build' directory, e.g. if I go:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
The configure step works fine, but when running make I get:
make all-recursive
Making all in src
/bin/sh: line 0: cd: src: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2
Any tips to get this working? Or should I give up and try something simpler/different.
I plan for this to be a reasonably simple C++ project, and the only dependency I plan to have is on the boost unit testing framework, and to do most development in Eclipse IDE.

Answer 1

there's a bug in your src/Makefile.am, line#17:
swin-adventure_SOURCES = src/main.cc
should really read:
swin-adventure_SOURCES = main.cc
since you are already in the src/ directory (unless there's a src/src/ subfolder)
there's another bug, as you are using special characters in your _SOURCES variabes: swin-adventure_SOURCES has the forbidden - character; try to normalize that to swin_adventure_SOURCES
finally, you are trying to assign a value to bin_PROGRAMS multiple times (and each time the same value), try to avoid that.
something like:
## Additional flags to pass to aclocal when it is invoked automatically at
## make time. The ${ACLOCAL_FLAGS} variable is picked up from the environment
## to provide a way for the user to supply additional arguments.
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = ${ACLOCAL_FLAGS}
## Define an executable target "swin-adventure", which will be installed into the
## directory named by the predefined variable $(bindir).
bin_PROGRAMS = swin-adventure
## Define the list of source files for the "swin-adventure" target. The file
## extension .cc is recognized by Automake, and causes it to produce rules
## which invoke the C++ compiler to produce an object file (.o) from each
## source file. The ## header files (.h) do not result in object files by
## themselves, but will be included in distribution archives of the project.
swin_adventure_SOURCES = main.cc