Re: AC_SEARCH_LIBS for GSL fails with -lgslcblas

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Brian,

* Brian Gough wrote on Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 11:03:19AM CEST:
> At Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:54:33 +0200,
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > It would be prudent and good style if GSL offered to its users a macro
> > or a couple, say gsl_CHECK_GSL that would check for presence of the
> > library (and needed libs) and headers.  Maybe even add a switch
> > --with-gsl[=PREFIX] or so.  And the best thing is: such a thing already
> > exists: on my Debian system it's at /usr/share/aclocal/gsl.m4 and part
> > of the package libgsl0, the macro is named AM_PATH_GSL (too bad it
> > invades Automake name space...).
> 
> Can you tell me what the recommeded form for the name should be?  I
> will change it. Thanks.

See
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Macro-Names.html>.

Name is in a way that makes it clear that Automake isn't the source of
this macro.  For example gsl_PATH_GSL, or AX_PATH_GSL (but if everyone
uses AX_, the clash probability is obviously higher than if not).

Since your name is already published though (and in widespread usage I
assume), it's prudent to provide a backward compatibility alias, in
which case your users' configure.ac script continue to work, but also
can be updated with autoupdate to use the new name:

  AC_DEFUN([gsl_PATH_GSL],
  [# macro definition
  # ...
  ])

  # Provide for the old name:
  AU_ALIAS([AM_PATH_GSL], [gsl_PATH_GSL])

If that naming or capitalization causes your editor or other tools not
to highlight the macro name appropriately, then it's time we fix the
editor and the tools.

Cheers,
Ralf