RE: Why is srcdir passed as .

[Bernard Dautrevaux]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mo DeJong [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 12:41 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: Why is srcdir passed as .
> 
> 
> On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Ben Woodard wrote:
> 
> > I am having a problem with my configure script where when 
> configure is
> > called for the subprojects a parameter --srcdir=. is passed 
> into them
> > when I just do configure. I expected that the srcdir would be ".." I
> > dug around in aceneral.m4 and found that it is quite deliberate. Why
> > is it done like this?
> > 
> > In autoconf 2.13, acgeneral.m4 line 2558 it has:
> > 
> >     case "$srcdir" in
> >     .) # No --srcdir option.  We are building in place.
> >       ac_sub_srcdir=$srcdir ;;
> >     /*) # Absolute path.
> >       ac_sub_srcdir=$srcdir/$ac_config_dir ;;
> >     *) # Relative path.
> >       ac_sub_srcdir=$ac_dots$srcdir/$ac_config_dir ;;
> >     esac
> > 
> > I don't see why you special case out ".". When I cut out 
> that special
> > case. Things still seem to work. Is there some case that I'm not
> > testing in which this would cause problems.
> > 
> > -ben
> 
> 
> Good question. I have a bunch of configure scripts where
> I have to do:
> 
> srcdir=`cd $srcdir ; pwd`
> 
> at the top of the file to get around problems created
> by this special case. Because of it, I can not cd
> to some dir and then cd back to $srcdir. Whats the deal?

I think there is two problems here:

Ben seems to use $srcdir where it meant $top_srcdir :-) (If we build
in-place, then $srcdir == $builddir in all the tree).

Mo on the contrary is bothered by the fact that $srcdir is relative; just
calling "./configure -srcdir=/absolute/path/to/srcdir" shoudl solve the
problem.

Regards,

        Bernard

PS: IIUC, the special case of "." is just to avoid getting, in some second
level subdirectory name lib/somelib, srcdir set to
"../lib/../../lib/somelib" which is almost equivalent (but a lot longer) to
"." ;-) The "almost" above is for the case where "lib" is in fact a link to
"../../commonlibs". In this case "." would be correct while
"../lib/../../lib/somelib" would yield a "file not found" error somewhere
;-?


--------------------------------------------
Bernard Dautrevaux
Microprocess Ingenierie
97 bis, rue de Colombes
92400 COURBEVOIE
FRANCE
Tel:    +33 (0) 1 47 68 80 80
Fax:    +33 (0) 1 47 88 97 85
e-mail: address@hidden
                address@hidden
--------------------------------------------