Re: @docdir@ and others unimplemented in (autoconf) 2.59

[Chris Pickett]

Chris Pickett wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was trying to use @docdir@ in a Makefile.am with Autoconf 2.59 as 
> specified in the GNU standards online, but actually it's only defined in 
> the Autoconf CVS, as of 2005-01-05.  The 2.59 documentation, on the 
> other hand, omits docdir as an available variable.
>
> I don't know if this is intentional... it seems to me that you'd want 
> the standards to match the latest stable version of tools.  I suppose 
> @htmldir@, @dvidir@, @pdfdir@, @psdir@, and @localedir@ are also bad, 
> and possibly others too.

Actually, I suppose the easiest thing is for you to compare Section 
7.2.4 of the online standards with Section 4.7.2 of the Autoconf 2.59 
manual (which isn't available online, the latest I could find was 
Autoconf 2.57).

Then, remove from the standards (for now) any "(If you are using 
Autoconf, write it as address@hidden@’.)" for which there is not a corresponding 
"Variable: foo" in the Autoconf 2.59 manual.

This is how I did it:

$ grep @ Directory-Variables.html | cut -f2 -d'@' | tee standard_vars
prefix
exec_prefix
bindir
sbindir
libexecdir
datarootdir
datadir
sysconfdir
sharedstatedir
localstatedir
includedir
oldincludedir
docdir
infodir
htmldir
dvidir
libdir
lispdir
lispdir
localedir
mandir
srcdir

$ grep 'Variable:' 2.59-section-4.7.2 | cut -f2 -d' ' | tee 2.59_vars
bindir
datadir
exec_prefix
includedir
infodir
libdir
libexecdir
localstatedir
mandir
oldincludedir
prefix
sbindir
sharedstatedir
sysconfdir

$ for dir in `cat stanvars | xargs echo`; do grep -q $dir 2.59vars || 
echo $dir; done
datarootdir
docdir
htmldir
dvidir
lispdir
lispdir
localedir
srcdir

But that list is actually missing pdfdir and psdir because the standards 
capture them with an "etc.".

So, in my opinion, these last 8 dirs here + pdfdir and psdir should be 
removed from the standards until they're available with a stable version 
of GNU Autoconf.
--
Chris Pickett
http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/~cpicke/