When subdir-objects option is enabled (without subdir-objects all works fine) and xxx_SOURCES contains paths stored in variables when automake tries to create directory named by variable name not value. For example: FOO=/path/to/foo foo_SOURCES=$(FOO)/bar.cpp Automake tries create directory $(FOO) not /path/to/foo, and make can not find dependencies. I attached minimal example. It use non recursive make, but recursive make also fails. In attached project problem seems to be in line 310 in generated Makefile.in. If I replace $(XXXDIR) with xxx manually, then all works fine. I use autoconf 2.69, automake 1.12.1 and gmake 3.82.