How to use multi-level SUBDIRS in Makefile.am:s?

A common issue automake complains about is caused by following lines in various Makefile.am:s

Makefile.am:
SUBDIRS = deployment transport/http/util transport/http/common engine transport

The intent of this line is to force the order of building so that transport/http/util and transport/http/common are build before the engine directory, and building rest of the transpo开发者_C百科rt after engine is build.

This line causes the following error when running automake under MinGW:

Makefile.am:1: directory should not contain `/'

This is caused by an old version of automake (at least 1.7 and older). Newer versions accept multi-level paths as values for SUBDIRS.