Re: Working in "real-life" or with "distcheck" but not both?

[Johan Persson]

Thanks! It was exactly the problem I faced (I have previously never had
to use DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS so it wasn't really in my autotools
vocabulary until now). I ended up implemented a similar solution but
without relying on pkg-config since it is not longer widely used as far
as I can tell. 

(This useful "trick" should really go into the autoconf/automake manual
since it is a generic way of handling absolute installation paths in
conjunction with distcheck) 

Cheers! 

On 2013-12-30 06:01, Russ Allbery wrote: 

> Johan Persson <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> As part of the installation of a project I'm working on I want to install a 
>> systemd service file which is created as part of the configuration process 
>> (by autoconf).
> 
>> Now I found myself in the situation where I can choose to have this work 
>> either in real life or when I make "make distcheck" but not both.
> 
> Have you seen the discussion of this in daemon(7)? It provides a working
> example that addresses exactly this situation, although it does rely on
> using the pkg.m4 Autoconf macros from pkg-config.
> 
> The basic idea is that you default to this:
> 
>> My problem is that me trying to install the service in an absolute system 
>> directory as
> 
>> $(INSTALL) -m 644 ${systemd_service} ${DESTDIR}/usr/lib/systemd/system
> 
>> will not work with distcheck since it requires the use of ${prefix} in order 
>> for the temporary install/check to work.
> 
> except pulling the actual directory from the pkg-config configuration for
> systemd (for example, it may be /lib, not /usr/lib, on, e.g., Debian), and
> then you override the directory with a --with flag in Makefile.am for use
> with distcheck.
> 
> The documentation and the Autoconf code is in "Installing Systemd Service
> Files" in daemon(7).