Re: VPATH elimination by configure

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>> "Akim" == Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:
Akim> It seems to me that Autoconf's job is not to remove unportable
Akim> code written by the user, so it seems wrong to have it remove
Akim> VPATH definitions from Makefiles.  Historically I'm sure it was
Akim> useful, in a previous century, in a previous millennium.

Tom> It is still useful because automake unconditionally puts VPATH
Tom> into Makefile.in.  How else will we get the definition into
Tom> Makefile?

I had not understood configure was supposed to play with automake
generated VPATH.

So, I think I'm slowly starting to understand this VPATH stuff:
configure wants to remove it only when useless, right?  I.e., when
VPATH is just set to srcdir?  So then, I'm in favor of Derek's patch
which seems finer that the current one, and updating the Autoconf
documentation to explain exactly what happens.