AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR

[Ralf Corsepius]

Hi,

Does anybody remember the reasonale for defining AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR
the way it currently is?
AC_DEFUN([AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR],
[AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS($1 $srcdir/$1)])

When building inside of a source-tree $1 and $srcdir will point to
the same directory, which means that the checks in
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS will be redundant.

When building a package outside of a sourcetree, the check for $1
will normally fail, and the check for $srcdir/$1 will be successful,
because install.sh normally is inside of the source tree (unless
being dynamically generated).

All this doesn't take effect, if source- and buildtree have the same
directory layout, but does if manually specifying srcdir when
configuring selected subdirectories of a deep package.

Example:
Given a deep source tree:
/a/b/configure.in
/a/b/install.sh
...
/a/b/c/d/configure.in

With /a/b/c/d/configure.in containing this:
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR(../..)

Configuring this way:
cd /x/y/z
/a/b/c/d/configure 

This will first (bogusly) check for 
/x/y/z/../../install.sh <-> /x/install.sh
and then (correctly) for
/a/b/c/d/../../install.sh <-> /a/b/install.sh

=> If /x/install.sh exists, ac_aux_dir will get set to
ac_aux_dir=../.., instead of the correct $srcdir/../..

Therefore, I am inclined to think that the current definition of
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR should better be changed into
AC_DEFUN([AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR],
[AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS($srcdir/$1)])

BTW: This would be in analogy to
AC_DEFUN([AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR_DEFAULT],
[AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS($srcdir $srcdir/.. $srcdir/../..)])

Ralf

-- 
Ralf Corsepius 
Forschungsinstitut fuer Anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung
(FAW)
Helmholtzstr. 16, 89081 Ulm, Germany     Tel: +49/731/501-8690
mailto:address@hidden           FAX: +49/731/501-999  
http://www.faw.uni-ulm.de