Re: AC_OUTPUT to parent dir and install-sh

[John Calcote]

Hi Willem,

As you may have discovered by now, the algorithm used by Automake to 
reference the autotools-installed utility scripts pre-pends the 
functional inverse of the $(srcdir) path to the utility program name as 
it's referenced. Thus, if you had a project, "test" with the following 
directory structure:

test/
   Makefile.am
   src/
      Makefile.am

In the resulting top-level Makefile, $(srcdir) is "./", the functional 
inverse of which is the same (the "identity" value, if you will). The 
"src" directory's $(srcdir) value is "./src", so it's functional inverse 
is "../" . However, the parent directory of "test" would have a 
$(srcdir) value of "../". The inverse of this directory can't be 
calculated, because it would require a directory name, which is not part 
of the original path. Thus, files outside of the project top-level 
directory can't be referenced in this manner.

This is a general rule, but it isn't strictly true -- there are some 
exceptions. For an example, if your project is a sub-project of a 
higher-level project, then you may reference the m4 macro directory of 
the parent project within a sub-project's AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR call in 
order to consolidate macros for all of the projects into one location. 
However, I shy away from such tactics because it makes your sub-projects 
non-functional outside of the context of the parent project.

Another problem that you'll soon discover, should you find a way to work 
around your install-sh problem is that a distribution package can't be 
built from a project that references files using relative paths outside 
the project's top-level directory. The project's top-level directory is 
the root of a tarball created for source-level distribution. Files above 
this root will not be captured in the tarball.

Regards,
John

On 7/19/2009 4:52 PM, Willem Jan Palenstijn wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is it allowed to list files in the parent directory of the
> main source directory in AC_CONFIG_FILES? I'm trying the following small
> example configure.ac:
>
> AC_INIT(testcase, 0.0.1, address@hidden)
> AC_PROG_INSTALL
> AC_CONFIG_FILES([test ../test_parent])
> AC_OUTPUT
>
>
> When I use autoconf-2.63 with this, and run the resulting configure
> script, and there is no 'install' program in $PATH, the script
> './install-sh' is used as $INSTALL. In the 'test' output file, @INSTALL@
> is then correctly replaced by './install.sh'. However, in
> '../test_parent' @INSTALL@ is replaced by '.././install.sh', which does
> not exist.
>
> At a cursory glance, it seems config.status is counting slashes in
> '../test_parent' and concluding test_parent is in a subdirectory of the
> source directory.
>
>
> Is this expected behaviour? I couldn't find any reference in the
> autoconf documentation or on the mailing list to this case, but I may
> have overlooked it.
>
>
> Should it be useful, I prepared a small tarball with the example
> configure.ac and the other necessary files at
> http://www.usecode.org/misc/autoconf_parent_output.tar .
>
>
>
> Aside: this issue popped up when building the Singular
> ( http://www.singular.uni-kl.de/ ) mathematics package which uses
> autoconf. It uses multiple configure scripts, one of which is in one
> subdirectory of the root and generates a Makefile in another
> subdirectory of the root. It was encountered by a Sage (
> http://www.sagemath.org ) developer who was building a patched Singular
> as part of Sage on a Solaris machine that did not have an 'install'
> binary.
>
>
>
> With kind regards,
> Willem Jan
>
>
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