Re: Site Macro Directory

[Mark D. Roth]

On Wed May 22 10:36 2002 -0500, Mark D. Roth wrote:
> Barring any further input from anyone, it seems like we've reached a
> consensus on this proposal.  The final version is included below.

Actually, I just realized that using a single include macro to handle
both the local files and the system-wide site macro directory (as a
number of people here suggested) would actually be a lot easier to
implement, and would still provide all of the functionality we've been
talking about.

So, here's my new proposal:

  * autoconf's search path should be:
      1. the current directory (i.e., $top_srcdir)
      2. the directories specified in $AC_MACRO_PATH (if set)
      3. the system-wide site macro directory (set at autoconf install time)

  * The search path should be used by the existing m4_include macro.
    No new macros are needed.

  * When including a particular file, the first instance of that file
    that is found in the search path is used.  Thus, files distributed
    with the package take first precedence, followed by files in the
    user-specified $AC_MACRO_PATH, followed by files in the
    system-wide site macro directory.

This allows the following:

  * aclocal can still be used to generate aclocal.m4.

  * Macros can be included from other files using m4_include.  This
    handles both macros distributed with the package and macros
    distributed seperately.

  * For those that do want to distribute macros seperately, the
    default site macro directory provides a simple, convenient way for
    autoconf to find locally installed macros.

  * Package-specific macros take precedence over site macros.

The only modifications that are needed are:

  * add support for $AC_MACRO_PATH

  * add configure option for setting system-wide site macro directory

There's no need for any of the complexity we were talking about in my
previous proposal.

Does this work for everyone?


> Paul or Akim, can one of you tell me how to procede with this?  Should
> I submit a patch, or would you prefer to implement these changes
> yourselves?

I'd still like to know how you'd like me to proceed.  Thanks for the
info!

-- 
Mark D. Roth <address@hidden>
http://www.feep.net/~roth/