Using autoconf with perl?

[Paul Lussier]

Hi all,

I'm having a tremendous amount of difficulty figuring out how to get my sw
to work with autoconf.

I've read through the autoconf manual, the m4 manual, and even went out and 
bought a copy of "Gnu Autoconf, automake, and libtool".  However, none of 
these texts seem to be aimed at the beginner, nor do they address the use of 
autoconf with software made up of what amounts to just shell scripts.

The problem I'm having is this.  I've written a utility in perl which relies 
upon a perl library module I've written as well.  I want to be able to allow 
the end-user of my package install it where ever they wish.  Part of the 
problem I have is that perl has a list of built-in paths it searches for 
loadable modules in.  The user may or may not want to install my package such 
that my module ends up in one of these paths.

Here's what I need to test for within my configure.in file, but can't seem to 
figure out how:

        if user specified --libdir
        then
            if --libdir is in perl's search path
            then
                do nothing
            else
                add BEGIN block to main perl program
                # Assuming I'd use AC_SUBST_FILE somehow
            fi
        else
            place library into site_perl libdir
        fi

What I have figured out so far is that I can test for --libdir within 
configure.in by testing the $libdir variable.  What I need now is to:

        - figure out whether that is contained within the list of 
          directories perl already uses
        - figure out what the default location for installing 
          3rd party modules into is.

Both of these are simple from the command line, it's the incorporating into 
configure.in that I'm having trouble with.

You can find the answers to both questions using 'perl -V':

perl "-V:install.*"             will return the locations to install
                                various perl-related things under.

perl "-V:installsitelib"        will return the location of where to install
                                local site related libraries under
                                (this is where I want to install by default
                                 if no other location is specified)

perl -le 'print join $/, @INC'  will return the ordered list of locations
                                where perl searches for libraries 

I guess the thing I'm having the most difficulty in compreheding is how do I 
execute a shell command and store the output into a variable to then use later 
in various tests.

I'd greatly appreciate any help anyone can provide in writing a configure.in 
to accomplish these tasks.  

Thanks a lot,
-- 
Seeya,
Paul
----
           I'm in shape, my shape just happens to be pear!

         If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!