Re: AC_OUTPUT to parent dir and install-sh

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Willem, John,

* John Calcote wrote on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 06:55:58PM CEST:
>
[ ./config.status --file=../outside-of-build-tree ]
> 
> 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 long-standing (but not major) bug in Autoconf.  It should
eventually be fixed but IMVHO it is not critical to do so right now.
One possibility to achieve this is to adjust the relativize code used
in gnulib-tool and automake/lib/am/distdir.am to w32 path separators,
and use that.

Cheers,
Ralf