Re: questions about AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR

[Stefan Seefeld]

Keith MARSHALL wrote:
> Stefan Seefeld wrote, quoting Ralf Wildenhues:
>>> The idea is that your final package tarball should contain what's
>>> needed to recreate the generated configure script.
>> It is one thing for a source package to contain M4 code, but another
>> to require users to have autotools installed.
> 
> Ralf isn't saying that the user needs to have the autotools installed;
> he is saying that your package *should* include all of the m4 source,
> so that the user has the option to modify and/or rebuild from scratch,
> if he so wishes.  That's an important distinction.
> 
> In your case, configure is merely checking that you have provided the
> m4 sources; it probably doesn't need to do that, but equally, it doesn't
> imply that it requires the autotools to be installed.

OK, thanks. I think I was merely confused because I couldn't
see any reason for configure to make the missing directory a
hard error, in particular as it didn't appear to do *anything* else
with the directory at all.

Thanks,
                Stefan

-- 

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