Re: (wishlist) Automated lib-config script generation

[akim]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 10:25:09PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 06:26:56PM +0200, Tim Van Holder wrote:
> > > The actual advantage of your macro comes of course with config.status
> > > updates - I hope that I can at one day turn my macro into a form that
> > > adds its -config file output-generation into config.status. IIRC the
> > > new autoconf does support some helper routines for exactly that purpose.
> > > But it seems I don't have much time before mid of august to actually
> > > do it.
> > 
> > Well, in case you generate a *-config.in in your macro, you can simply
> > add
> > 
> >   AC_CONFIG_FILES(*-config)
> > 
> > to your macro and it will automagically create it for you.
> 
> I have tried this, and it works:
> 
> AC_CONFIG_FILES(translit([$1], [A-Z], [a-z])-config, chmod +x translit([$1], 
> [A-Z], [a-z])-config)
> ])
> 
> However, it does not work with automake:
> 
> address@hidden:/tmp/tmp$ automake
> configure.in: 925: required file `./translit([$1.in' not found
> make: *** [Makefile.in] Error 1
> 
> It seems as though automake parses configure.ac, but does not properly
> expand the macros, and so gets the name of the file wrong if it is not
> a literal.  I have yet to try the latest automake (I'm using 1.4-p2),
> but would be interested if you could try the script.  
> 
> AC_CONFIG_FILES(foo-config, chmod +x foo-config)
> in configure.ac works fine.

This is the kind of things which are impossible to handle before 1.6
which will be based on Autoconf traces.  Forget about it.

> I suppose AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS could be used instead, but it's not as
> clean.  If automake had something like AM_IGNORE_FILE(), which could
> be given m4 code as well as literals, that would solve the problem.

That's a dirty workaround.  Some day your wishes will become reality,
but today, it's just impossible.  AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS might be a cleaner
workaround indeed.