Re: Site Macro Directory

[Akim Demaille]

| I've proposed a solution that would solve this problem without
| removing any flexibility.  Just to keep everyone on the same page, my
| current proposal is:
| 
|   * autoconf's search path should be:
|       1. any directories specified in `-I' options
|       2. the current directory (i.e., $top_srcdir)
|       3. the directories specified in $AC_MACRO_PATH (if set)
|       4. the system-wide site macro directory (set at autoconf install time)

As a side note, I would suggest that the people shipping macros
install them under a common tree, aclocal for instance, *but*, they
use a single directory prefix.  For instance, Autoconf macro files are
all under autoconf/, autotest's under autotest/ etc.  We should not
need too a AC_MACRO_PATH, pointing to aclocal should suffice.
Automake, for a start, should store its macros under aclocal/automake/.

|   * The search path should be used by the existing m4_include macro.
|     No new macros are needed.

Agreed.

|   * When including a particular file, the first instance of that file
|     that is found in the search path is used.  Thus, files distributed
|     with the package take first precedence, followed by files in the
|     user-specified $AC_MACRO_PATH, followed by files in the
|     system-wide site macro directory.
| 
| The only modifications that are needed are:
| 
|   * add support for $AC_MACRO_PATH
| 
|   * add configure option for setting system-wide site macro directory
| 
| I think this proposal solves the problem nicely, but I'm not totally
| wed to it.  If you have an alternate solution, I'd love to hear it.
| However, I don't think it's reasonable to ignore this problem
| altogether.
| 
| Please let me know what you think.  Thanks!

It sounds good!