Re: How do users use autoconf-archive?

[Peter Simons]

Hi Dustin,

gnulib-tool is quite impressive; it's like a little package manager.
That script makes it really easy to assemble an Autotools build.

The Autoconf Archive doesn't have anything that fancy, I'm afraid.
We've been pretty much reliant on aclocal. You add the following
line to Makefile.am:

  ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I build-aux --install

Now, aclocal automatically copies all required macros into the
specified directory:

  $ rm build-aux/ax_* && autoreconf -i
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_config_feature.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_config_feature.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_have_adns.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_have_adns.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_have_epoll.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_have_epoll.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_have_poll.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_have_poll.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_have_select.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_have_select.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_prefix_config_h.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_prefix_config_h.m4'
  aclocal: installing `build-aux/ax_with_prog.m4' from 
`/usr/share/aclocal/ax_with_prog.m4'

Unfortunately, this approach makes it difficult to apply patches.

It would be nice, to have a solution that's more flexible than
aclocal, which pretty much depends on all macros being installed in
a system directory.

Take care,
Peter