Re: Macros in cvs modules

[Matt Armstrong <matt lickey com>]

Federico Mena Quintero <federico@nuclecu.unam.mx> writes:

> Hello, 
> 
> Right now every package on cvs that needs to use Gnome's autoconf
> macros has to include the virtual macros/ subdirectory.  This is
> inconsistent with the way .m4 files work elsewhere, where they are
> picked from $(prefix)/share/aclocal and similar.  Also, the Gnome
> .m4 files are not installed on the system, so third party programs
> cannot use our nice Autoconf macros.
>
> I think the Gnome packages that contain .m4 files should install
> them in the standard location, just like Gtk+ does.  Also, the other
> modules should be made to read the macros from there, not from the
> macros/ directory.
> 
> Comments?

I agree.  The GnuCash package (which is being ported to Gnome) uses
its own m4 macros to detect GnuCash.  This is probably because the
authors didn't know about the standard ones.  If they were installed
into $(prefix)/share/aclocal, there would be a standard way to to use
the macros.

Debian sticks the Gnome autoconf macros in a /usr/share/aclocal/gnome
directory.  This is better than nothing, but it really should stick
them in /usr/share/aclocal so aclocal finds them by default (it does
not recurse subdirectories).

-- 
matt - http://www.lickey.com