Copying vs m4_including macro files

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Gentle Reader:

I want to minimise duplication of macros among directories in CVS libtool. 
Libtool-1.5 was released with libtool.m4 and ltdl.m4, but due to 
idiosyncracies in the build process, these files were copied to acinclude.m4 
in no less than 10 directories. Running aclocal then copied these to 
aclocal.m4 in each directory, for a total of 21 copies of (200k) libtool.m4 
and 5 copies of (13k) ltdl.m4 :-(

I was hoping to remove acinclude.m4 and use m4_include in aclocal.m4 by 
switching to CVS automake, but currently the contents are still copied to 
aclocal.m4 if they are not in the same directory as configure.ac.  Wherever I 
put libtool.m4, 8 sibling directories still get a copy of the macros instead 
of an m4_include.

I think that it is wrong for aclocal to copy macros from AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR
directories, if the directory is listed there, then that directory will need 
to be shipped, or `make dist' won't work. If the directory is shipped, then it 
is okay for aclocal to m4_include files from it.

I would supply a patch, but my perl-fu is inadequate to the task.  What I 
think needs to happen is write_aclocal() should not consider AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR 
directories to be `outside the project' when it decides what to do about a 
macro.  aclocal doesn't currently collect macro traces from configure.ac, and 
pasting the code from automake seemed like overkill.

Cheers,
        Gary.
--
  ())_.  Gary V. Vaughan    gary@(lilith.warpmail.net|gnu.org)
  ( '/   Research Scientist http://www.oranda.demon.co.uk       ,_())____
  / )=   GNU Hacker         http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool  \'      `&
`(_~)_   Tech' Author       http://sources.redhat.com/autobook   =`---d__/