Re: gnome-core bombs mightily

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel nuclecu unam mx>]

[ Big problem with .m4 file installation, proposed solution ]

> aclocal: configure.in: 170: macro `AM_PATH_ESD' not found in library
> 
> Because, about two days ago, a commit in gnome-core made the whole
> shebang depend on having esd installed! And, if it's not, aclocal
> fails, which means autoconf fails.

This is a problem we keep having.  Every time we add a dependency on a
new library, we create a .m4 file that is supposed to check for the
presence of the package on the system and set compilation flags
accordingly.

This has a problem: to create the configure file we need to have every
single optional package we check for installed which I think is
broken.

I would very much preffer to have all of the macro checking files in
the "macros" virtual subdirectory (including gtk+, glib, imlib, esd)
so that our autogen.sh programs can run always no matter what packages
are installed on the system.

So, does anyone object to move the .m4 files in every module we have
to the macros directory?  I really see no point in complicating
everybody's lifes just to avoid shipping a macros directory in each
package.

We can even go further: we can just have a per-package macros
directory (for people concerned with shipping too many files in
certain library packages), so glib, for example would have a
glib-macros directory, and the contents would be virtually linked to
the GNOME "macros" directory.

Best wishes,
Miguel.