Re: Copying vs m4_including macro files

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

> >  Do not use aclocal.m4 in these subdirectories.  Simply add
> >  m4_include([../aclocal.m4]) and maybe m4_include([../ltdl.m4])
> >  at the top of all these configure.ac.
>
> Not an option since all of the automake macros need to be copied in for
> configure.ac to be expandable to a working configure script :-(

Aren't they already in ../aclocal.m4 ?  If you m4_include that file,
configure.ac ought to be expandable.

I think you misread my comment as a suggestion to include
../libtool.m4; I'm really talking about including ../aclocal.m4.
Presently almost all the subdirectory aclocal.m4 are equal to the
top-level one: better share than duplicate.

> Therefore I think it is fine to consider relative directories specified
> with -I to be project local.

Ok, thank you.  I'll change this tonight.

> I think AC_CONFIG_M4_DIR as you describe it above is the correct solution,
> and since CVS automake already requires CVS autoconf, there is no reason
> not to put a dummy definition in CVS autoconf.  Only the people who want to
> use the feature will need to ensure they upgrade autoconf and automake in
> synch.
>
> The autoconf part of this feature is trivial (I can provide a patch if
> that's useful), but I suspect I'd need to be able to write perl to
> implement the aclocal end :-)

Fortunately, if we consider relative directories as local, we don't
need to look at AC_CONFIG_M4_DIR.  Adding this macro to Autoconf is
probably a good thing for the future, though.