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

[Stefano Lattarini]

On Thursday 17 March 2011, Maynard Johnson wrote:
> On 03/17/2011 5:17 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > 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
> its 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'd expect a properly written autogen.sh script to honor the ACLOCAL
environment variable when calling aclocal; if that is the case, you
can resort to:
  $ ACLOCAL='aclocal -I /usr/share/aclocal' ./autogen.sh
without having to modify any file.  If OTOH the autogen.sh script doesn't
honor the ACLOCAL environment variable, IMHO it's broken, and contributing
a patch about this back to the package maintainer would be the right thing
to do (again IMHO).

BTW, this is an example of where the yet-to-be-implemented 'ACLOCAL_PATH'
would be really useful: instead of having to hack the autogen.sh as above,
you could simply do:
  ACLOCAL_PATH='/usr/share/aclocal' ./autogen.sh
which would work also if autogen doesn't honor the ACLOCAL environment
variable.

> 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.
>
That could go in the FAQ section of the Automake manual:
 <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/FAQ.html>
I might attempt a patch, but not soonish.  You are free to beat me
if you want to give a try ;-)

Thanks,
   Stefano