Re: RFC: let aclocal output m4_includes for local m4 files

[Pavel Roskin]

Hello, Alexandre!

> [Hi Pavel!  I'm CC:ing you because you introduced
> ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES, and this patch marks that variable
> as obsolete.  Let me know if you disagree.]

Yes, the patch makes ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES unnecessary for the project that
required it.  The intention was to use some m4 files from a shared
repository, but distribute only those that are needed for the given
project.

>  adl> It just occured to me there is a nifty way to fix this.  When
>  adl> aclocal is about to copy a local file (where local means part of
>  adl> the project), it can just replace it with
>  adl> m4_include([the_local_file]).

The problem here is that you need to figure out which files are local and
which are not.  I see you wrote a clever regex for that, but something
tells me that some people will ask for overrides.  For example, some
projects don't distribute m4 files, but those files are located on CVS
inside the project directory.

Such projects should be changed to include the original m4 files and
shorter aclocal.m4, but it will take time to convert them.

I think it would be nice to have an option for aclocal to disable the use
of m4_include globally.  Notwithstanding, ACLOCAL_M4_SOURCES should be
made obsolete.

As I was writing it, "make distcheck" has successfully completed, foo.m4
wasn't in the tarball.  Excellent!

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin