Automatic setting of program_transform_name

[Eric M. Monsler]

Hi all,

My apologies for bothering the developers, but I could not figure this 
out after searching the online manual, the "GNU Autoconf, Automake, and 
Libtool" book, and the mailing list archives.

I have an application making use of autoconf and automake, called 
"avdisplay".  My configure.in currently has the line:

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(avdisplay,2.51)

In various places, I use the VERSION information that gets set to 
identify the binary internally.  All is good.

However, I have now a requirement to keep around all the binary versions 
as the application changes.

I have been doing this by naming them avdisplay2.51, etc.  However, I 
would like to automate this, both to reduce the chance of error, and to 
allow a 'make install' to succeed without the chance that the install 
will overwrite the avdisplay shell script that calls the appropriate 
version.

I am aware of the configure options --program-suffix, etc., but that is 
still a manual requirement that must be kept in sync.

How can I get the resulting Makefile to end up with the default 
transform line of:

transform=s,$$,$(VERSION),

in the absence of any overriding or additional configure options?

It seems as if this must be possible somehow, but I cannot figure it 
out.  Perhaps obviously, some solution other than using the existing 
transform mechanism would be just as good, but that seems to be the 
mechanism nearest to what I need.

Please cc: me with any responses, as I am not on this mailing list.

Thank you for your time,

Eric Monsler