Re: Documentation flaw in autoconf

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Michaël,

* Michaël Grünewald wrote on Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:21:04AM CEST:
>
> Autconf will substitute in Makefile's templates many ``Preset Output  
> Variables''. Some values of these variables represents path to  
> directories in the file system. The documentation (section 3.3.1) does  
> not tell whether these paths are absolute or relative, or if this  
> characteristic is unspecified.

They should be absolute, or formulated in terms of other variables which
are absolute.  Thus,
  ./configure --prefix=/foo --includedir='${prefix}/myinclude'

should work.  It's probably _not_ a good idea to move far away from the
way the default variables are listed as terms of, as that could break
scripts that rely on initializing the variables in the right order.

Thus, you should not set prefix in terms of includedir, for example.
prefix should be primary key if any, exec_prefix and datarootdir the
next if any, and directories for executable stuff and for data stuff
keyed off of them.

> The documentation should be explicit  about this issue.

Probably.  But the documentation should also keep in mind that this part
is executing that which is written in the GNU Coding Standards; in this
section
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Installation-Directory-Variables.html>
the Autoconf manual refers to it:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/standards/Directory-Variables.html>
which I think explains it more or less well.

Cheers,
Ralf