Re: aclocal only picking up /usr/local/share and not /usr/share

[Maynard Johnson]

On 03/17/2011 5:17 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> [adding automake-patches]
>
> On Thursday 17 March 2011, Maynard Johnson wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I have installed a version of aclocal into /usr/local that's newer
> > than my distro's version (I needed a fix from the newer version).
> > But then I ran into a problem recently where the build of some
> > package was failing because aclocal was not finding the pkgcfg.m4
> > file in /usr/share/aclocal.
> > I created a dirlist in /usr/local/share/aclocal and added
> > /usr/share/aclocal to it. That did indeed resolve the problem.
> > But is that the best way to resolve this problem?
> IMO, if you have control on the installation of the aclocal you are
> using, this is the right fix (and the one I'd suggest and use in your
> situation).
>
> > Maybe this is documented somewhere,
> Yep:
>   <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Macro-Search-Path.html>
>
> If you think that's not clear enough, remember that suggestions and
> costructive criticism are always welcome!
>
> But then I have to say, the page above is admittetdly not easy to find,
> being indexed with the incompete title "Scanning configure.ac or
> configure.in".  Ralf, what about the attached patch (for maint)?
> Maynard, are you OK with being added to the THANKS file?
Sure.
> > and I just didn't see it, but it took me longer than I care to
> > admit to resolve this.  Seems like it could be a fairly common
> > problem.  Have others solved it in a more clever way rather
> > than telling system owners they need to create a new dirlist
> > if they've installed aclocal in a non-standard location?
> Well, you could always resort to adding proper `-I' option to
> you aclocal calls.  Also, in the next automake release, aclocal
> will probably support a new 'ACLOCAL_PATH' environment variable
> that would help solving this kind of problems
Except this happens when building a 3rd party package.  Yes, I have the source 
for that package, and, in fact, the first fix I did was to update it's 
autogen.sh (where aclocal is called) to add '-I /usr/share/aclocal'.  But that 
didn't seem like the right way to go either for the general case (i.e., I don't 
think that's an appropriate fix to contribute back to the package maintainer). 
I think the best I can do is to suggest an FAQ on that package's web site that 
documents the error and the solution.

Thanks for your response.

-Maynard
> Regards,
>    Stefano