Creating a 'make benchmark'

["Dr. David Kirkby" <drkirkby at ntlworld dot com>]

I have written a numerically intensive program
http://atlc.sourceforge.net/
that runs on multiple CPUs using threads. Also, at a very early stage
of development (apparently works on Linux but certainly not on my
Sun), can run distributed over a network. Compiler options, whether
the program is configured with support for threads, or for distributed
processing, all affect the execution speed. 

I was thinking of adding the ability to benchmark the executables.
i.e. so something like 'make benchmark' to run a set of benchmarks and
report on the time taken. 

Firstly, does using automake in this way seem sensible, or should it
not be done using automake?

Secondly, if it is sensible, how would I do it? Can I add a target
like 'benchmark' and if so how? Clearly any such target would need to
depend on the fact the sources have already been built. I could write
the benchmark as a script. So assuming I can write a script called
'timeme', how would I ensure that 'timeme' gets run if the user types
'make benchmark' ?




-- 
Dr. David Kirkby,
Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Medical Physics,
University College London,
11-20 Capper St, London, WC1E 6JA.
Tel: 020 7679 6408 Fax: 020 7679 6269
Internal telephone: ext 46408
e-mail davek at medphys dot ucl dot ac dot uk