Re: aux directory name

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Bruno,

* Bruno Haible wrote on Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 02:42:58PM CEST:
> 
> It has been reported that the "config" directory name led some people
> to look for configuration results there.

Has such a report ever been sent against the Autoconf package?
I mean, before yours now?

> A poll on bug-gnulib resulted in "build-aux"
> as new name for this directory in several GNU projects. Here is a patch to
> make autoconf follow suite.
> 
> This patch needs the following commands as preparation steps:

> Afterwards you need to replace config/m4.m4 with m4/m4.m4 in some files
> (aclocal.m4 or Makefile.in ... well-known problem when renaming .m4 files).

I don't see any bug this change fixes, and it's a potential source of
errors, as you already noted; as such IMVHO this change belongs to after
the freeze, thus post 2.60, if it should be done at all.

I'm undecided whether it should be done at all, so I'll leave that
decision to others.  FWIW, I see your point wrt. uniformity of package
layout, but for me personally, it means additional work when tracing
changes through CVS history.

> *** autoconf-2.59c.orig/build-aux/Makefile.am 2006-04-12 22:42:16.000000000 
> +0200
> --- autoconf-2.59c/build-aux/Makefile.am      2006-04-14 01:48:09.000000000 
> +0200

> ***************
> *** 20,32 ****
>   
>   # This line added to force a rebuild of Makefile.in.
>   
> ! EXTRA_DIST = $(SPECIFIC_MACROS) $(SPECIFIC_TOOLS) \
>             prev-version.txt
>   MAINTAINERCLEANFILES = $(GENERIC_TOOLS)
>   
> - SPECIFIC_MACROS =                           \
> - m4.m4
> - 
>   GENERIC_TOOLS =                                     \
>   config.guess                                        \
>   config.sub                                  \
> --- 20,29 ----
>   
>   # This line added to force a rebuild of Makefile.in.
>   
> ! EXTRA_DIST = $(SPECIFIC_TOOLS) \
>             prev-version.txt
>   MAINTAINERCLEANFILES = $(GENERIC_TOOLS)
>   
>   GENERIC_TOOLS =                                     \
>   config.guess                                        \
>   config.sub                                  \

This change is wrong: m4.m4 will only be distributed automatically with
Automake versions >= 1.8, but you didn't change the minimum Automake
version from 1.7.9 in configure.ac.

Cheers,
Ralf