How to approach nested autoconf package configuration (second try)

[Germán Diago Gómez]

Sorry for resposting, but I didn't receive any reply. Did the message 
arrive into the mailing list?

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask a question I couldn't solve about autotools nested
packages.

I have a project with subdirectories that use autoconf as well. The
(simplified) structure is this one:


SuperProject/
    configure.ac...
    Libs/
        LibProject/
            configure.ac...
    Programs/
        ProjectBinary/
            configure.ac...

Actually they are separate projects (separate git repos) and I created a
superproject (another git repo) that holds both. The problem I find is
that configure checks for ProjectBinary should find LibProject. For that
I want to use PKG_CHECK_MODULES([DEPS], [LibProject]) inside
ProjectBinary/configure.ac but since ProjectBinary runs configure before
LibProject is compiled and installed, ProjectBinary cannot find
LibProject module.  I added an option to disable PKG_CHECK_MODULES and
add the library to the linker manually in Makefile.am, but it looks like
cheating to me. So my question is:

- Is there a well-known/standard way to avoid this? One idea I have (if
possible) would be compiling and installing immediately after
configuring LibProject, and, after this, go into ProjectBinary. But
autoconf first executes all checks for all packages and later compiles
and installs (at least by default).

Regards,

Germán Diago Gómez