Re: autoreconf -i question

[Richard Ash]

On Fri, 2008-06-06 at 16:10 -0600, John Calcote wrote:
> When I run autoreconf -i to initialize my project I get the following
> output:
> 
> $ autoreconf -i
> libtoolize: putting auxiliary files in `.'.
> libtoolize: copying file `./ltmain.sh'
> libtoolize: You should add the contents of the following files to
> `aclocal.m4':
> libtoolize:   `/usr/local/share/aclocal/libtool.m4'
> libtoolize:   `/usr/local/share/aclocal/ltoptions.m4'
> libtoolize:   `/usr/local/share/aclocal/ltversion.m4'
> libtoolize:   `/usr/local/share/aclocal/ltsugar.m4'
> libtoolize:   `/usr/local/share/aclocal/lt~obsolete.m4'
> configure.ac:16: installing `./compile'
> configure.ac:8: installing `./config.guess'
> configure.ac:8: installing `./config.sub'
> configure.ac:6: installing `./install-sh'
> configure.ac:6: installing `./missing'
> src/Makefile.am: installing `./depcomp'
> 
> My question: Do I REALLY need to copy all of those .m4 files into my
> aclocal.m4 file? If so, why doesn't libtoolize (or aclocal) do that for me?

Did you have an aclocal.m4 file before you started? If so, I suspect
that aclocal won't touch it in case it contains important stuff you
don't want to loose.

I believe the ideas is that anything that you need in the way of macros
goes in acinclude.m4, and aclocal.m4 is not distributed - it's built by
aclocal from the system files as required. If you move your current
aclocal.m4 out of the way, hopefully the errors will disappear
permanently (aclocal will recognise if an existing aclocal.m4 file was
auto-generated and happily overwrite it).

Richard