Re: replacement of variable placeholders in files

[Jason Curl]

Dizzy wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have an input file named project.conf.in in which I have some variable 
> placeholders of the form ${VARIABLE}. I am trying to use sed to replace them 
> with some actual contents so I have added a make rule in Makefile.am such as:
>
> project.conf:project.conf.in $(top_builddir)/config.status
> $(SED) -e 'address@hidden/@'"${localstatedir}/@g" 
> $(top_srcdir)/conf/project.conf.in > $@
>   
Instead of having the Makefile do this for you, why not during 
'configure' time with the AC_CONFIG_FILES? And then define the variable 
substitutions as part of the configure script? Even define a macro if 
you want to logically separate everything.

e.g.

AC_CONFIG_FILES([project.conf
    Makefile
    subdir/Makefile])
> Notice that I first have a string with single quotes so I tell bash to not 
> deal with ${LOCALSTATEDIR} then I have a string with double quotes so bash 
> can replace the ${localstatedir} variable contents and no space between which 
> seems to work well if I run that command in shell.
>
> However I think that configure replaces the ${LOCALSTATEDIR} from the 
> generated Makefile.in with "" (because there is no such variable so it puts 
> an empty string) and ignores my single quotes.
>
> Any idea how to implement such a make rule that should replace variable 
> placeholders with contents of actual variables?
>
> Thanks!
>
>