Re: questions about AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR

[Keith MARSHALL]

Stefan Seefeld wrote, quoting Ralf Wildenhues:
>> The idea is that your final package tarball should contain what's
>> needed to recreate the generated configure script.
>
> It is one thing for a source package to contain M4 code, but another
> to require users to have autotools installed.

Ralf isn't saying that the user needs to have the autotools installed;
he is saying that your package *should* include all of the m4 source,
so that the user has the option to modify and/or rebuild from scratch,
if he so wishes.  That's an important distinction.

In your case, configure is merely checking that you have provided the
m4 sources; it probably doesn't need to do that, but equally, it doesn't
imply that it requires the autotools to be installed.

Regards,
Keith.