Why are all object file names prefixed with lib_a-?

[Neal H. Walfield]

At Sun, 8 Feb 2009 07:58:07 +0100,
Karolina Lindqvist wrote:
> 
> In the newlib library, all the object file names are changed, and are prefixed 
> with lib_a-
> Like strlen() becomes lib_a-strlen.o
> etc.
> Why is this?
> It is not that he lib_a- prefix makes much sense to anyone, or does it?
> Why can't the object file be called plain strlen.o, for strlen() etc?

If you use AM_CPPFLAGS et al., automake would use the bare name, in
this case strlen.o.  If you use lib_a_CPPFLAGS, however, automake
makes the conservative assumption that the same source file may be
used by multiple targets with different flags and prefixes the
object's name with the target.

Neal