Re: include bindir in AUTOM4TE default

[Jens Petersen]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

> >>> "Ralf" == Ralf Corsepius <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>  Ralf> Am Mit, 2001-12-05 um 12.20 schrieb Jens Petersen:
>  >> Ralf Corsepius <address@hidden> writes:
>  >> 
>  >> > Am Mit, 2001-12-05 um 10.53 schrieb Akim Demaille:
>  >> > > >>>>> "juhp" == Jens Petersen <address@hidden> writes:
>  >> > > 
>  >> > > >> * bin/autoconf.in (AUTOM4TE): Prefix with bindir, so that autoconf
>  >> > > >> runs even when it is installed outside the current PATH.
> 
> [...]
> 
>  >> > > I'm not in favor of it.  I believe that the principle of least
>  >> > > surprise means obeying to the PATH.  In the past, autoconf has had
>  >> > > problems because of hard coded paths.

Akim, could you elaborate?  Grepping the ChangeLog files for
"hard" didn't seem to give any relevant comments about
hardcoding of autoconf's files.

>  >> Ok, but isn't there also the risk of getting a different
>  >> version of autom4te ahead in the path relative to the
>  >> desired version?

>  Ralf> Yes, this risk is present and actually is very easy to run into if
>  Ralf> having different versions of autoconf installed to different PREFIXes.
>  Ralf> I recently encountered exactly this problem and reported it, cf.
>  Ralf> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/bug-autoconf/2001/msg00633.html
>  Ralf> BTW: autoreconf is subject to similar issues.

Agreed.

It seems to me that if autoconf is correctly installed, the
path to the correct corresponding autom4te file is known and
should be used by default to avoid the aforementioned
problems.  I don't see why hardcoding this path by default
should cause any problems, though it is quite possible I'm
overlooking something.

> What about something like this:
>   if test -z "$AUTOM4TE"; then
>     AUTOM4TE = `echo "$0" | sed s/@address@hidden/@autom4te-name@/`
>   fi
> or
>   dir=`echo "$0" | sed -e 's,[^\\/]*$,,'`
>   : address@hidden@}
> That should obey PATH if the user typed `autoconf', but
> use `/mumble/autom4te' whenever the user ran `/mumble/autoconf'.

Ok, but this doesn't really solve the PATH dependence
problem Ralf and I are discussing in the default case.

Jens