how to something from the configure script into one of the test programs?

[Ed Hartnett]

Howdy all!

I am using automake and autoconf with an Earth science library called
netCDF.

In my testing, if --enable-large-file-tests is used with configure, I
run some tests which create very large files, like 4 GB and over.

To accommodate this on machines with disk quotas, I want to allow the
user to specify to configure a directory in which large files can be
created during testing. 

But how do I do that?

I have the following, which captures the value (defaulting to "."):

# If the env. variable TEMP_LARGE is set, or if
# --with-temp-large=<directory>, use it as a place for the large
# (i.e. > 2 GiB) files created during the large file testing.
AC_MSG_CHECKING([where to put large temp files if large file tests are run])
AC_ARG_WITH([temp-large],
            [AS_HELP_STRING([--with-temp-large=<directory>],
                            [Specify directory where large files (i.e. >2 GB) 
will be written, if large files tests are run.])],
            [TEMP_LARGE=$with_temp_large])
TEMP_LARGE=${TEMP_LARGE-.}
AC_MSG_RESULT($TEMP_LARGE)
AC_SUBST(TEMP_LARGE)

But how do I use TEMP_LARGE when running my test program?

I have tried running a test script, and using $TEMP_LARGE in the
script. This works if I supply TEMP_LARGE on the command line with the
make command, but it doesn't pick up the TEMP_LARGE defined during
configure.

So how do I take TEMP_LARGE and get it into one of my test programs?

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks!

Ed


-- 
Ed Hartnett  -- address@hidden