tips for configuring in the source directory?

[Benjamin Kosnik]

There has recently been some noise on the gcc lists about making gcc
work for in-source configures and builds. As part of that, I'd like to
try and get libstdc++-v3 to work with in-source configuring. It uses
autoconf/automake/libtool.

As a first step, I stripped a fresh 'gcc' module check out of all
non-c, non-c++ isms, and tried to build in the source directory with
--enable-languages=c,c++

This same process works quite well for a build directory that is !=
the source directory.

However, as soon as I get to the libstdc++-v3 configure, I get this:

make[1]: Leaving directory 
`/mnt/hd/soma/src.gcc_inline/i686-pc-linux-gnu/libiberty'
Configuring in i686-pc-linux-gnu/libstdc++-v3
ChangeLog               ..linked
Makefile.am             ..linked
Makefile.in             ..linked
README          ..linked
acconfig.h              ..linked
[snip many other such instances]
ostream_manip.cc                ..linked
ostream_seeks-1.tst             ..linked
ostream_seeks.cc                ..linked
ostream_unformatted.cc          ..linked
streambuf.cc            ..linked
stringbuf.cc            ..linked
stringstream.cc         ..linked
wide_stream_objects.cc          ..linked
debug_assert.h          ..linked
ext             ..working in
headers.cc              ..linked
printnow.c              ..linked
loading cache ../config.cache
configure: error: can not find install-sh or install.sh in .. ./..

If I look in the build directory, I see an attempt to soft-link all
the files in the source directory and source sub-directories:

<address@hidden> /mnt/hd/soma/src.gcc_inline/i686-pc-linux-gnu/libstdc++-v3  
%ls
./             aclocal.m4@      configure.target@  mkcshadow@
../            confdefs.h       docs/              mkinclosure@
ChangeLog@     config/          include/           mknumeric_limits@
Makefile.am@   config.h.in@     libio/             porting.texi@
Makefile.in@   config.log       libmath/           src/
README@        configure@       libsupc++/         tests_flags.in@
acconfig.h@    configure.host@  mkc++config@       testsuite/
acinclude.m4@  configure.in@    mkcheck.in@


Yuck. So, my questions are pretty basic at this point:

1) is there something obvious that I should be doing to support this
2) what's causing this link madness
3) is there a pointer or reference to help about this subject.

thanks,
benjamin