minor autoconf/automake annoyances

[Jasper Huijsmans]

At 01:45 AM 4/24/02, you wrote:
>Es schrieb Jasper Huijsmans:
> >
> > I'm afraid I can't confirm that it works with the older versions.
> >
> > On the other hand, I think I found my gettext problem:
> >
> > At the end of configure.in there is a sed command on po/Makefile.in to
> > po/Makefile.
> > However, po/Makefile is already created by configure! If I commant out
> > this line I get the proper result.
>
>interesting.
>
> >
> > Am I the only one with this problem?
>
>never notice. I just saw that the po-makerules were triggered a lot
>more often than necessary...

Actually I was thinking, shouldn't all those sed commands be replaced with 
their autoconf equivalents (AC_SUBST(var) and AC_OUTPUT (file)).

> >
> > Op di 23-04-2002, om 20:26 schreef Edscott Wilson Garcia:
> > > On Tuesday 23 April 2002 16:10, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> > > > By no means am I an expert on automake issues, so I may be talking 
> utter
> > > > nonsense here.
> > >
> > > That makes at least two of us ;-)
> > >
> > > Some time ago I tried automake 1.5 and it didn't work right. AFAIR, 
> Guido said
> > > something about it being broken. Although I do get some AM_this_and_that
> > > warnings, automake-1.4p5 works ok here.
>
>you can safely ignore those - some macros where shuffled from this
>to that but autoconf can sort it out after all...
>
> > >
> > > > Also, most/all of the things I found may be caused by my use of
> > > > slackware-current tools: autoconf 2.53, automake 1.5, gettext 0.11.
> > > > Anyway, I found the following 'problems':
> > > >
> > > > 1) make regenerates files (see earlier post on the subject). This can
> > > > suposedly be changed by putting AM_MAINTAINER_MODE in configure.in. It
> > > > seems to work for me.
>
>hmm, I use am_maintainer_mode quite often but I am no pleased either
>with the current behaviour.... it should work anyway...

It does work, it only runs al autotools again. I read in the documentation 
that it is suposed to do that unless AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is used. Maybe I 
misread it.

> > > >
> > > > 2) If you do a make clean after configure, make quits with an error
> > > > about a lot of missing .dep/* files. This seems a bit strange to me.
>
>Woow, another interesting case. the configure will create the dep-files
>but there is an explicit entry in the makefile.am's (being remainings
>from earlier versions) that remove these files. May be, these .deps
>in CLEANFILES should be removed instead...
>
> > > >
> > > > 3) automake has two errors about noinst_DATA not being defined in
> > > > xfglob/icons/Makefile.am and xfwm/Makfile.am.
> > > > This can be solved by moving the definitions up before the use of the
> > > > variable.
>
>ooops ... but look closer, it does even remove the noinst_DATA from
>the final Makefile. however, it shouldn't be a problem if it comes
>later, what the *real* problem is... aahmm.... did you notice the
>backslash-newline-escape just before the end of the file itself?
>... just do something about it and... and it works :-)=)

Right, I saw those and removed them. I didn't think it would matter. Well 
this is even easier then.

> > > >
> > > > 4) make fails in po/ because @CATALOGS@ and @POFILES@ are
> > > > not expanded by configure. I'm guessing that it's a problem with
> > > > gettext, but --with-included-gettext doesn't seem to work for me.
> > > > BTW, on a side-note, gettext also complains about empty strings marked
> > > > for translation in xfce/xtree_toolbar.c and xfsamba/xfsamba_gui.c.
> > > >
>
>dunno about that.... po is not my type of autotoolish stuff...

This was solved by removing the sed line at the end of config.in.

> > > >
> > > > I can change 1) and 3) in CVS if you want. I have no idea whether 
> 2) and
> > > > 4) are caused by my setup or something else.
> > >
> > > If the changes make it work with automake 1.5 without breaking the way it
> > > works with automake 1.4p5, I can think of no good reason why not to 
> commit.
> > >
>
>the makefiles can indeed be made compatible for 1.4p5 *and* 1.5,
>what's not that easy would be to make everything compatible from
>2.13 up to 2.53...
>
>... btw, I don't like 2.53, please use 2.52 or one of the updates for 2.53.
>Use 2.53 or later if you want a feature from automake 1.6...

I don't particularly want to use any version. It's just that they came with 
slackware-current and that's what I installed. And I'm always willing to 
try new versions. I knew there would probably be difficulties, so all this 
is partly (mostly) my own fault.

However when I installed automake-1.4p4 and autoconf-2.50 from slack-8 I 
got a warning about 'library being used but LIBTOOL not defined' in 
lib/Makefile.am. Maybe autoconf 2.13 will work.


>(btw, sorry for not reading the mailinglist regularly, too busy in other
>  areas for the moment).

Thanks for the answers. And ...

>have fun, guido

... I always have when playing with xfce :-).

Jasper