Re: $sysconfdir substitution

[Gavin Smith]

On 10 June 2016 at 08:05, Peter Johansson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Kip,
>
> I have the following rule in my Makefile.am to generate a C header file.
>
> configmake.h: Makefile
>     $(AM_V_GEN)echo '#define BINDIR "$(bindir)"' > $@
>
> You could have a similar rule to generate a file suitable to source into
> your script.

This works because the variable "bindir" is completely expanded in the
Makefile rules.

The Texinfo project has similar code to substitute for variables in a
AC_CONFIG_FILE-like way in an output file:

do_subst = sed \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(PACKAGE_VERSION),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(PACKAGE_NAME),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(PACKAGE_URL),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(sysconfdir),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(prefix),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(datarootdir),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(datadir),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(pkglibdir),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(PACKAGE),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(USE_EXTERNAL_LIBINTL),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(USE_EXTERNAL_EASTASIANWIDTH),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(USE_EXTERNAL_UNIDECODE),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(TEXINFO_DTD_VERSION),g' \
  -e 's,address@hidden@],$(enable_xs),g' \
  -e '1 s,/usr/bin/env perl,$(PERL),g'

texi2any: texi2any.pl $(top_builddir)/config.status
        $(do_subst) $(srcdir)/texi2any.pl >$@
        chmod a+x $@

The gist of this is that it's using sed to generate one file from
another, substituting in the values of some Makefile variables. I
don't know if it's possible or advisable to use this in combination
with AC_CONFIG_FILES, but using it instead of AC_CONFIG_FILES would
certainly work.