[Evolution-hackers] Failing to configure libgdata from git master?

[Paul Smith <paul mad-scientist net>]

Hi Philip; all the docs I saw for libgdata list just your address as a
contact; if there's a mailing list or similar you'd like me to CC please
let me know.

I maintain a makefile that allows people to build Evolution from the
latest git sources along with a significant chunk of other Gnome (and
some non-Gnome) libraries that Evo also uses.

One of the new requirements for the latest Evo git master is libgdata.
It requires 0.6.3 or above, but the version that comes on my Ubuntu
(9.04) box is 0.4.0, so too old.  So, I've added support for building
libgdata from git to my makefile... or started to.

The checkout of the git code works fine but the configure command fails
right away:

>>>>> Running config for libgdata
/usr/bin/gnome-autogen.sh
checking for autoconf >= 2.53...
  testing autoconf2.50... not found.
  testing autoconf... found 2.64
checking for automake >= 1.9...
  testing automake-1.11... found 1.11
checking for libtool >= 1.5...
  testing libtoolize... found 2.2.6
checking for glib-gettext >= 2.2.0...
  testing glib-gettextize... found 2.25.0
checking for intltool >= 0.30...
  testing intltoolize... found 0.41.0
checking for pkg-config >= 0.17.1...
  testing pkg-config... found 0.22
checking for gtk-doc >= 1.0...
  testing gtkdocize... found 1.11
Checking for required M4 macros...
  introspection.m4 not found
***Error***: some autoconf macros required to build gdata
  were not found in your aclocal path, or some forbidden
  macros were found.  Perhaps you need to adjust your
  ACLOCAL_FLAGS?

Looking around I found copies of introspection.m4 in the git source
trees for atk and gtk+.  However, neither of those packages install that
file as part of their normal builds.

I think if you need this you should be including it in the sources of
libgdata, or else maybe file a bug against gtk+ or similar asking them
to install it during their builds?

I worked around this locally by manually copying introspection.m4 from
gtk+ into my target $prefix/share/aclocal, where autoconf found it.

Thanks!