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

[Maynard Johnson]

On 03/17/2011 10:02 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> 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

yes, this technique worked for me, too.

> 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 ;-)

I haven't gone through the process with my company to get approval to contribute 
to the automake project.  The package in question is oprofile, and 
coincidentally  ;-), I'm the maintainer of that package, so I already added an 
FAQ.  Feel free to use of the wording you find there, if it seems appropriate. 
http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/faq/ -- bottom of the page.

-Maynard

> Thanks,
>     Stefano