macro search path

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
  node "Macro search path" describes several ways how one can tell aclocal
where to search for macro files.

Please consider the following scenario:
        /opt/gnome28 contains Gnome 2.8
        /opt/gnome210 contains Gnome 2.10

Then I sometimes want to search
        /opt/gnome28/share/aclocal
sometimes
        /opt/gnome210/share/aclocal
but never both.

So I cannot use /usr/share/aclocal/dirlist for both types of builds.

I could use '-I /opt/gnome28/share/aclocal', but I had to do some tricks
to make sure that this option is propagated to the makefile rule for
aclocal.m4.
Besides this, the manual rightly says that -I should be used for
relative paths, not for absolute ones.

Similar problem arises when I don't have write access to /usr and have
some packages with prefix $HOME/usr, yet I don't want to reinstall
Automake under $HOME/usr and want to use the system's Automake.

In both cases, a colon separated env. variable ACLOCAL_PATH would
solve the problem neatly.  Could you accept such a change?

Have a nice day,
        Stepan Kasal