Re: Why is srcdir passed as .

[Mo DeJong]

On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Ben Woodard wrote:

> > I think there is two problems here:
> > 
> > Ben seems to use $srcdir where it meant $top_srcdir :-) (If we build
> > in-place, then $srcdir == $builddir in all the tree).
> > 
> > Mo on the contrary is bothered by the fact that $srcdir is relative; just
> > calling "./configure -srcdir=/absolute/path/to/srcdir" shoudl solve the
> > problem.
> > 

> The command that I'm using is:
> 
> ac_configure_args="${ac_configure_args} --enable-local-tdb=${srcdir}/tdb"

...

> The way that I am using "srcdir" now is:
> 
> srcdir=`cd $srcdir;pwd`

...

This is exactly the sort of hack I would like
to avoid. Where is the logic in forcing everyone
to fix this problem instead of just putting
it into autoconf? It becomes a no-op if you
do it twice, so there should not be a problem.

The "just pass it on the command line" suggestion
is not feasible. We are talking about end users
that just want to compile the package here.
They will want to run:

./configure ; make install

and expect it to work, and why shouldn't they?
Expecting them to do more than this is
not a good idea.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc