Autoconf caches AC_INIT arguments

[Bob Friesenhahn]

The forthcoming Automake release is about to break the means I have 
been using to automatically version my package (without manually 
editing configure.ac) for the past 9 years.  I am told to use m4 code 
in the AC_INIT arguments in order to supply package versioning 
information.  This is what I am using:

AC_INIT(m4_esyscmd([scripts/pkginfo.sh package_name]),
        m4_esyscmd([scripts/pkginfo.sh package_version]),
        m4_esyscmd([scripts/pkginfo.sh package_bugreport]))

Unfortunately, this approach works exactly once since Autoconf 2.69 is 
caching the computed arguments passed to AC_INIT.  Running 'autoconf' 
or 'autoreconf' again does not result in an updated configure script. 
Running 'autoconf --force' in the source tree seems to work.

I am trying to get Automake to re-run Autoconf at the right times 
using the --force option, but thus far I have been foiled.  My most 
recent attempt uses these additions:

configure.ac:

# Additional files that 'configure' is dependent on
AC_SUBST([CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES], ['$(top_srcdir)/ChangeLog 
$(top_srcdir)/version.sh $(top_srcdir)/scripts/pkginfo.sh'])

Makefile.am:

$(top_srcdir)/configure: @MAINTAINER_MODE_TRUE@ $(am__configure_deps)
        $(am__cd) $(srcdir) && $(AUTOCONF) --force

which seems like it should cause autoconf to be re-run with the 
--force option whenever one of the files listed in 
CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES is updated.

The configure script never gets regenerated.  Even if I manually 
request to build the configure script in the source tree, the 
configure script does not get regenerated.

The configure script does not get re-generated and re-executed even 
though 'ChangeLog' has a newer timestamp.

Is there a way to eliminate AC_INIT argument caching when autoconf is 
re-executed?

Is there a way to assure that configure gets re-generated based on the 
dependencies listed in CONFIGURE_DEPENDENCIES as documented in the 
Automake manual section 16 "Rebuilding Makefiles"?

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/