Re: Site Macro Directory

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 03:25:07AM -0400, Allan Clark wrote:
> "Mark D. Roth" wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed May 15 17:21 2002 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > > I use Automake's "aclocal" for this.  It generates aclocal.m4
> > > automatically from m4/*.m4.  In my case, the m4/*.m4 files are often
> > > links to the "canonical" versions.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, that won't work for me, since I use autoconf but not
> > automake.  
> 
> I have a toolbox in the trunk of my car, but I never use the crescent
> wrench.

In the words of Tom Tromey, who wrote aclocal in the first place (the original
can be found at http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/automake/1997-March/002667.html):

> I see the whole aclocal mechanism as a hack to work around autoconf's
> own limitations in this area.
> [...]
> But aclocal is confusing.  It adds yet another level of indirection to
> a process that already has too many programs to run and files to read.
>
> Instead I'd like to see autoconf scan a directory in the source tree
> for m4 files.  Maybe the directory name could be specified in an
> argument to some autoconf macro.
> 
> Then aclocal could just make symlinks in that directory to the
> appropriate files in the [automake] distribution.  This would fit nicely with
> other tools that do a similar job (eg gettextize, libitize).

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
Anyone who swims with the current will reach the big music steamship;
whoever swims against the current will perhaps reach the source.
        - Paul Schneider-Esleben