5.9 The Future of `aclocal'

[Bruce Korb]

That section says:
>    Many packages come with a script called `bootstrap.sh' or
> `autogen.sh', that will just call `aclocal', `libtoolize', `gettextize'
> or `autopoint', `autoconf', `autoheader', and `automake' in the right
> order.  Actually this is precisely what `autoreconf' can do for you.
> If your package has such a `bootstrap.sh' or `autogen.sh' script,
> consider using `autoreconf'.  That should simplify its logic a lot
> (less things to maintain, yum!), it's even likely you will not need the
> script anymore, and more to the point you will not call `aclocal'
> directly anymore.

In fiddling with sharutils, I discovered that it is  too early to encourage
the dropping of bootstrap scripts just yet.  "autoreconf" does not  provide
a way of convincing automake to run with the options, "--gnu" and 
"--add-missing".
Even:

   AUTOMAKE=`which automake`' --gnu --add-missing'

was not successful, so I wound up with this:

> ##  autoreconf doesn't add the --gnu option to automake....
> ##
> ##  AUTOMAKE=$(which automake)\ --gnu\ --add-missing
> ##  export AUTOMAKE
> ##
> ## autoreconf --force --install --include=m4 -Wall || :
> 
> ##  libtoolize --force -- not used
> 
> autopoint --force     || echo autopoint [gettext] issue
> aclocal -I m4 --force || echo aclocal [automake] issue
> autoheader --force    || echo autoheader [autoconf] issue
> automake --gnu --add-missing --copy --ignore-deps -Wall || \
>       echo automake issue

So, my suggestions:

1.  This paragraph should be tweaked to speak of the shortcomings
2.  autoreconf needs a way of specifying "GNU standard utility"
3.  It would be interesting to understand why this line:
       my $automake   = $ENV{'AUTOMAKE'}   || 'automake';
     failed to pick up the "--gnu" option.

Thanks.  Regards, Bruce