Makefile woes

[John Dowding]

I want to do something that ought to be simple, but I cannot find
a way to do it.

I have a project that is being developed by several programmers.
I want to keep the "official" source in one directory, and let
the programmers work on changes in their own local directories.
I want to use just a single makefile (most of the programmers
aren't Unix proficient enough to maintain their own makefiles).

I want them to be able to work by copying the Makefile to their own
directory, and then check out the file that they want to modify
into their own directory.

Now, when they do a make to test their changes, I want the Makefile
to prefer a local copy over the copy in the default directory,
otherwise to use the default file if no local copy exists.

I am running Sun Unix 4.1.1.

Thanks in advance,


--
John Dowding
dowding at ai.sri.com