Re: aclocal flags are a pain

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Reading autoreconf source right now.  I may just switch to it if my testers
> tell me it works on OS X and msys.

Ok, I see the following things that I like to be able to do but autoreconf
does not do currently:

  * Many autogen.sh scripts I've seen try each of automake, automake-1.10,
automake-1.9 automake-1.8 automake-1.7 in that order to pick the first one
available.  I'm sure there's good reason for them doing that.  Perhaps because
of some stupid packaging by some distro at some time...  My autogen.sh also
checks for glibtoolize before libtoolize as I mentioned before.

  * My autogen.sh also checks the version of the available tools against those
requested in configure.ac.  Would be trivial to do in autoreconf as it already
traces configure.ac.

  * GNOME packages also need to run intltoolize and gtkdocize.  Would be nice
to add them in autoreconf.  I can cook a patch if there is interest.

  * Not sure about this one, but I think autoreconf options --force and
--install kinda take my flexibility away to apply those to some of the tools
but not others.  For example we have a hand written INSTALL file in cairo.
Running "autoreconf --install --force" overrides my INSTALL file.  But I need
those options for the libtoolize call.


Cheers,

behdad