AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS & hand-coded configure

[Gour]

Hi!

I'm new with autoconf tools and need to solve the following problem: I have
a package which contains few subpackages, e.g.. pkgA, pkgB and pkgC.

First I need to build a pkgA and then the built library is used for building
pkgB, and then pkgC & pkgD should be built and everything has to be
installed.

pkgA (clisp) does not use configure.ac(in), but it uses his own hand-coded
configure script; its modules (dir1..dirn) have their own Makefile.in
files, and I have to invoke 'configure' with few extra parameters.

In a picture it looks like:

mypackage 
        |-- configure.ac
        |-- Makefile.am
        |-- ...
        | 
        |----------     pkgA
                |-- configure
                |-- ...
                |-- dir1
                ...
                |-- dirn

        |---------- pkgB
                |-- Makefile.am
                |-- file1
                ...
                |-- filen
        |-----------pkgC
                |-- Makefile.am
                |-- file1
                ...
                |-- filen


So, pkgA (clisp) has to be built with its own 'configure' script which is
invoked with some extra parameters to provide runtime-engine for the rest
of the package.


I have tried to use AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS in my top-level configure.ac as:

AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([clisp-2.33.2])

but autoconf complains that clisp directory does not contain
configure.ac(in):

I read about using 'configure.gnu' and found one post in autoconf archives
(Jul '04) which says:

<quote>
In the tools (aka pkgA) subdirectory, write a wrapper script called
    configure.gnu, which takes the arguments passed in from the
    top-level configure script and massages them however you
    need, then calls:
        $CONFIG_SHELL ./configure ...
    to do the work.
</quote>

and this solve the problem of passing additional arguments to hand-coded
configure script in pkgA.

However, the problem remains 'cause in the post it is stated:

<quote>
Write a tools/configure.ac (aka pkgA/configure.ac) and do the usual stuff
with it.
</quote>

and I have to use hand-coded configure script which does not use
configure.ac.

The question remains: how to easily solve the problem of invoking custom
'configure' script in one of the sub-package directories?

Any other macro I'm missing?

Sincerely,
Gour