Re: Dynamic AC_OUPUT

[Gary Kramlich]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Hello Gary,
>
> * Gary Kramlich wrote on Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 03:08:38AM CEST:
>   
> > This python script also determines what directories should have
> > makefiles created and so on.  I've gotten far enough to trick configure
> > into outputting all of the make files.  (This is done by appending the
> > directories to ac_config_files before AC_OUTPUT).
> >     
>
> Bad.  ac_config_files is not defined in the Autoconf manual.  Please use
> AC_CONFIG_FILES([file ...]).
>   
I know it's bad which is why I said I'm tricking configure :).  
Unfortunately it's the only way I could find that works, since 
AC_CONFIG_FILES and AC_OUTPUT will not expand a variable.
> > I was working on this in an already configured tree, and thought I had
> > it with the ac_config_files hack.  However, turns out automake when
> > being run from my autogen doesn't like this.  I realize it's just
> > reading in the contents of AC_OUTPUT, and tried to work around this by
> > specifying the directories to the initial call of automake.  However, it
> > drops out every time refusing to create depmod.
> >     
>
> FYI, automake heavily uses something called "autoconf traces" which is
> pretty much asking m4 "show me the args whenever the macros
> AC_CONFIG_FILES, AC_INIT, ... are called".
>
>   
Okay... And that's revelvent how?  Also that should have been depcomp 
before, not sure what I was thinking when it typed it.
> > If examples are needed, please let me know so I can provide them.
> >     
>
> Yes, an example would be good.
>   
My current configure.ac can be found at  
http://guifications.org/viewmtn/viewmtn.py/revision/file/bb213ab0dd13c157983c938e87543dd046926b21/configure.ac.

The old version with the static AC_OUTPUT can be found at 
http://guifications.org/viewmtn/viewmtn.py/revision/file/8b7205059f62d7bd12ea5cb6a024182c74f42a74/configure.ac.  
As you can see it's already becoming quite a pain to find a given config 
file, which is why I'm trying to automate it.

What I'm trying to solve is the problem of adding another plugin to this 
package and forgetting to drop it in configure.ac as well as the issues 
of these seemingly never ending list.  What I'm trying to accomplish is 
to move all the info about each plugin into a plugin.cfg xml file so 
that I can easily handle everything from build dependencies, to 
autogenerated documentation and so.  Being able to determine at 
autogen/configure time what directories need to be output would go a 
long end to save quite a few headaches.

I mean I suppose I could do something crazy like run the python script, 
get the names of the directories, and then used sed to place them into 
AC_OUTPUT as a static string, but it would be preferred to only have to 
rerun configure and not regenerate it from configure.ac.
> Cheers,
> Ralf
>   

Thanks,

--
Gary Kramlich