AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR now required when mdate-sh resides in subdir?

[Jim Meyering]

Hi Derek,

Recently, automake changed so that I get the following in fileutils-4.1,
even though I've put a copy of mdate-sh (though not in the official tarball)
in doc/.

  $ automake --gnits --include-deps
  doc/Makefile.am:2: required file `./mdate-sh' not found

I don't use AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR.  The last time I checked, I found it didn't
work because some of those aux files live at the top level, and others
(like mdate-sh and texinfo.tex) belong in doc/.

If I move mdate-sh to the top level directory, then automake works fine.
I noted that automake does still find texinfo.tex, even though it resides
in doc/.

Could it be that your May 13 change is the one that induced
this incompatibility?  A snapshot from 2 May didn't have this problem.

Since mdate-sh is used solely (in automake-generated rules, at least)
to provide version.texi support, I think it makes sense to look for it
first in any texinfo (e.g., doc/) directory, and only if not found there,
then to search elsewhere.

This problem also arises if you try to use the latest version of
automake with the just-released autoconf-2.50.

Regards,
Jim