Re: Site Macro Directory

[Akim Demaille]

| After considering this for a few days, I think the current behavior is
| actually better.  The current behavior is that each language has its
| own environment variable and its own site macro subdirectory:
| 
|  LANGUAGE   ENV VAR           SITE MACRO DIR
|  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  autoconf   AC_MACRO_PATH       ${datadir}/autoconf/site_macros/autoconf
|  autotest   AT_MACRO_PATH       ${datadir}/autoconf/site_macros/autotest
|  m4sugar    M4SUGAR_MACRO_PATH  ${datadir}/autoconf/site_macros/m4sugar
|  m4sh     M4SH_MACRO_PATH     ${datadir}/autoconf/site_macros/m4sh
| 
| This setup accomplishes your goal of making sure that people put files
| in the proper place.  However, it has two advantages:
| 
|  * It's more convenient for Autoconf users, because they can say
|    `m4_include([foo.m4])' instead of `m4_include([autoconf/foo.m4])'.

When maintaining Autoconf, maintainability seems much more important
than convenience.  In particular, Autoconf has always suffered from
underestimating what the future will be like.  Henceforth, I much
prefer the other scheme for being more open.

As far as convenience could be an issue, I insist on the fact that
syntactic sugar can be introduced (AC_INCLUDE).


|  * It's more intuitive for Autoconf users to use AC_MACRO_PATH than to
|    use AUTOM4TE_PATH.  Remember that autom4te runs behind the scenes,
|    and most Autoconf users probably don't know it's there.

More intuitive, I agree with that.  Guessable, no.  Therefore, since
in any case reading the doc will be required, I see no strong
difference.


| Given this, I think it makes more sense to keep it the way it is.
| What do you think?

I'm still in favor of the scheme I suggested.