Re: .m4 dependencies: automake is smarter than aclocal

[Bruno Haible]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Of course, those macros correspond to the files I'd removed,
> and the root of this trouble lies with a conditional dependency
> in gettext.m4's AM_GNU_GETTEXT:
>
>   ifelse(gt_included_intl, yes, [
>     AC_REQUIRE([AM_INTL_SUBDIR])dnl
>   ])
>
> Since that condition is always false in coreutils (the sole use
> of AM_GNU_GETTEXT looks like this):
>
>   AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external], [need-ngettext])
>
> automake is right in not including any of the .m4 files
> needed for when gettext's intl/ directory is included as part
> of the package.

Hey, cool! automake has become more clever. I previously thought that
it is impossible to write an autoconf macro that needs some other macros
in one case and doesn't need them in another case, and omit the unneeded
files from the distribution.

Now, if automake can do it, aclocal should be able to do it as well,
since it uses the same input, and the contents of the Makefile.am is
irrelevant here.

Bruno