Automake,cygiwn: installing automake outside of "normal" location

[Charles Wilson]

The following patch allows site-wide configuration, so that a specific 
set of directories can always be searched by aclocal for m4 files -- 
rather than just its own $acdir, and without requiring -I flags.

For instance, on cygwin, we have:
  /usr/autotool/devel/[bin,lib,share,include]
    (contains autoconf-2.53, automake-1.6, libtoolCVS)
  /usr/autotool/stable/[bin,lib,share,include]
    (contains autoconf-2.13, automake-1.4p5, libtool-1.4.2)

In /usr/bin, we have wrapper scripts to intelligently select which 
"tree" to use.  However, unless you pass '-I/usr/share/aclocal' EVERY 
time you call aclocal, you'll miss the .m4 scripts that are installed by 
other packages into the "standard location" of /usr/share/aclocal/.

The following patch allows a distribution packager or site manager to 
add a 'dirlist' file into automake's $acdir.  That dirlist file contains 
a list of directories, one per line.  So, in our case:

  /usr/autotool/devel/share/aclocal-1.6/dirlist

contains simply

  /usr/share/aclocal/

which is where gettext and pkgconfig etc put their m4 files.  This way, 
the "development" aclocal will look in both 
/usr/autotool/devel/share/aclocal-1.6/ and /usr/share/aclocal for .m4 
files -- without requiring an explicit -I at every invocation.

If the dirlist file does not exist or is empty, behavior is unchanged 
from the present.

Naturally, we use a similar patch for our automake-1.4p5 installation in 
/usr/autotool/stable/*  However, I believe this patch could be 
beneficial in other environments, as well.

--Chuck

2002-05-03  Charles Wilson  <address@hidden>

        * aclocal.in: specify a list of directories to search
        with a configuration file in $acdir-$APIVERSION.

diff -urN -x .build -x .inst -x .sinst automake-1.6.1-orig/aclocal.in 
automake-1.6.1/aclocal.in
--- automake-1.6.1-orig/aclocal.in      Fri Feb  1 15:40:48 2002
+++ automake-1.6.1/aclocal.in   Thu May  2 02:25:23 2002
@@ -46,6 +46,10 @@
 # Note also that the versioned directory is handled later.
 $acdir = "@datadir@/aclocal";
 $default_acdir = $acdir;
+# contains a list of directories, one per line, to be added
+# to the dirlist in addition to $acdir, as if -I had been
+# added to the command line.
+$default_dirlist = "$acdir-$APIVERSION/dirlist";
 
 # Some globals.
 
@@ -213,6 +217,23 @@
     {
        print $acdir, "\n";
        exit 0;
+    }
+
+    if( open (DEFAULT_DIRLIST, $default_dirlist) )
+        {
+      while(<DEFAULT_DIRLIST>)
+      {
+        # Ignore '#' lines.
+                 next if /^#/;
+        # strip off newlines and end-of-line comments
+                 s/\s*\#.*$//;
+        chomp($contents=$_);
+        if ( -d $contents )
+        {
+          push (@dirlist, $contents);
+        }   
+      }
+      close (DEFAULT_DIRLIST);
     }
 
     # Search the versioned directory near the end, and then the