Re: Site Macro Directory

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark D Roth <address@hidden> writes:

Mark> First, autoconf will be modified to read all of the m4 files in
Mark> the `ac-package' subdirectory.  Just as with the aclocal.m4
Mark> file, these files will be read automatically; no AC_INCLUDE
Mark> macro will be necessary to read individual files.  This should
Mark> not present a scalability problem because only the set of macros
Mark> required for the package will be placed in the package's
Mark> `ac-package' subdirectory.

I think your solution is too complex, because you didn't envision that
aclocal.m4 would remain being generated.  Just by someone else:
autoreconf.

As a proof of concept, I invite you to look at CVS M4: it basically
does (by hand) what I'm suggesting.  You'll see too, that there was a
major problem in this framework: automake was too stupid.  It needs to
see the AC_SUBSTS etc., and it used to look for them in aclocal.m4.
As a result, because it doesn't follow m4_include it missed almost all
of them.  That's why we first had to move automake to using traces.
This is now done, and it works (in CVS Automake).

Now that this problem has been tackled, we can continue.  I insist,
there were technical problems to fix first, and all of them are done.
*Now* we can finish what was started.

If you look at CVS M4's bootstrap, it precisely works around these
Automake problems.  Using CVS Automake, forthcoming 1.7, this is no
longer needed.