title: automake programmatically generate rules / use macros
body: <p>I need a way to generate part of the resulting makefile beyond what Automake can provide. That is, the rules cannot be generated from standard Automake. However, with a simple bit of substitution it would be easy to convert some basic parameters into the makefile chunk. I see that autoconf uses M4, but apparently the automake part doesn't (in Makefile.am). So is there any way to use some kind of macro facility in the Makefile.am files?</p>
  
  <p>Essentially I just want a macro facility. If there is no automake way I'll resort to using GNU makefile templates.</p>