Management for relative paths in global build system settings

[SF Markus Elfring]

Hello,

Software development projects can grow in the way that corresponding components
will be stored in several subdirectories. Such a project organisation has got
consequences on the management of some dependencies.

Now I am looking for advanced support by the Autoconf software infrastructure
(and related tools) once more.

* Macros like “AC_CONFIG_SUBDIR_CUSTOM” were developed a while ago.
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2011-04/msg00006.html

* The components in these subdirectories will usually need some information
  also from the global build system settings. A portion of the involved
  configuration variables will eventually store relative paths.
  I imagine that desired data processing for them can trigger special
  development challenges then.
  How do you prefer to achieve consistent and safe access for paths across
  the directory hierarchy?

  Which programming languages would you try out to convert such data into
  absolute paths (for example)?

Regards,
Markus