Re: autoconf 2.53 doesn't find autom4te

[Bruno Haible]

Akim Demaille writes:
> It is a bug from the user if autoconf cannot be found in the PATH.

Akim, what do you think we have support for --prefix in autoconf for?
If what you say were right, namely that the user never must call programs
outside of PATH, then every user could install his stuff in
/usr/local/bin or $HOME/bin, and there would never be the need for
--prefix.

The world is not that simple.

> It is wrong to hard code locations in the binaries.

All GNU packages which install multiple files need this. gcc needs
this to find its lib/gcc-lib/... dir, all internationalized packages
need to hardcode LOCALEDIR so they find the message catalogs, vim
needs to hardcode its help texts, and so on.

> Bypassing PATH is far worse, as you are breaking the most basic Unix
> convention: obeying PATH.

This is not one of the most basic Unix conventions. Otherwise there
wouldn't be system calls like execl() and execv().

Bruno