Re: Unneeded PACKAGE_TARNAME in config.h

[Steven G. Johnson]

I would argue that prefixing *every* autoconf #define symbol is the wrong
way to do it.

When you need to include configuration-specific #defines in an installed
library header file, there are typically only a few #defines that you need
to install.  Including the 100's of symbols that might be in your
config.h.in into your installed header, installed on every system and
#included in all sorts of programs you have no control over, is not what
you want.

What you want is to use config.h internally, and to substitute *only*
those definitions that you need into your installed foobar.h.  This is
quite easy to do.

In your configure.in, do:

AC_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h foobar.h)

Then, autoheader will generate the full config.h.in for you, with its
gazillion #defines, but will not touch foobar.h.in...this latter file you
create *manually*, with whatever few #defines that you need for your
installed header.

Steven

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> Why is this functionality not standard in Autoconf?
> 
> Bob
> 
> On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Guido Draheim wrote:
> 
> 
>>Bob Friesenhahn schrieb:
>>
>>>The package I maintain has no need for these definitions, and in fact
>>>they cause problems for other Autoconf users since my package is a
>>>library which includes its config.h as part of the installed header
>>>files, and these definitions conflict with similar definitions in the
>>>dependent application's config.h.
>>>
>>
>>That can happen with other config.h definitions as well,
>>and (rpm,deb,whatever) packages might disagree about
>>their findings of environment issues as it depends on
>>what had been installed during configure time on a
>>development system as opposed to those parts in the
>>target system. Use AX_PREFIX_CONFIG_H for that, I've
>>developed it for the exact purpose to install config.h
>>safely as part of the library headers and many libary
>>makers have picked it up in the last years.