Re: Fwd: [Bug 347095] installing m4 macros that break random packages

[Eric Blake]

On 12/07/2010 10:39 AM, Bruce Korb wrote:
>> these files make no sense ... they're coming from gnulib (which should never 
>> be
>> installed) or libopts (which is a package all by itself) or colliding with
>> standard autoconf macros:
>> /usr/share/aclocal/unlocked-io.m4
>> /usr/share/aclocal/extensions.m4
>> /usr/share/aclocal/libopts.m4
> 

> But this is not my file -- it gets rolled up into the tarball because
> I use a macro that it contains.

Which macro are you using?  Can you show the .m4 file that you are
installing as part of your public interface to autogen that is depending
on extensions.m4 under the hood?

> So, the questions:
> 
> 1. Should these m4 files be installed?

Probably not - since extensions.m4 is not providing a public m4 macro
directly related to autogen, you are probably better off rewriting your
public macro to work without having to rely on extensions.m4.

> 2. If so, why and how can the reported conflicts be averted?

The gentoo bug had appropriate comments - you should not be installing a
macro that overrides an upstream autoconf macro unless you also take
care to only do the override for versions of upstream autoconf where the
override is necessary (that is, conditionally define the override only
in the case where it is not already provided by autoconf).

> 3. If not, where's the magic for suppressing the installation?

I'm not sure where the magic for installing it was located in the first
place; can you track down why extensions.m4 was being installed?  (and
that may be more of an automake question)

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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