Re: install-sh simplifications

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

 >>>>>> "adl" == Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:
 adl> Is there any need to AC_SUBST(install_sh) at all?

 Tom> It is used in lib/am/distdir.am.

Ah, right, thanks.  This explains why it never broke.  (It is
only used at the toplevel, where it doesn't not matter whether
install_sh is relative or not.)

[...]

 Tom> At some point in the future it would be nice if we could
 Tom> support moving the tree again.  That might require
 Tom> autoconf support.

I used to think that adding a feature to Autoconf to adjust the
relativeness of some variables before substitution (as already
done for @top_srcdir@, @INSTALL@, etc.) would be enough [*].
But today I'm not so convinced.  For instance, $MISSING starts
with ${SHELL} before the actual `missing' path; should Autoconf
be smart enough to ignore ${SHELL} and adjust the following
path?  This sounds ugly.  I'm sure there would be plenty of
exceptions like this one.

[...]

[*] http://sources.redhat.com/ml/autoconf/2001-02/msg00025.html
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz