bug: depcomp misplaced

["Derek R. Price" <derek dot price at openavenue dot com>]

The CVS automake, using --add-missing and not using AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR,
is placing depcomp in whatever directory it first encounters C files in
then looking for it during configure in $(top_srcdir).

The problem appears to start on line 3054 of automake.in (in the
handle_dependencies function):

    # Set location of depcomp.
    local ($prefix) = ($config_aux_dir_specified ? $config_aux_dir
            : '$(top_srcdir)');

    &define_variable ('depcomp', "\$(SHELL) $prefix/depcomp");

    &require_config_file ($FOREIGN, 'depcomp');

I'm not sure what the complete solution is, but it looks like
handle_dependencies isn't called until the first C file is encountered,
at which point &require_config_file adds depcomp to '.' (which could be
a subdir of $(top_srcdir)), ignoring the fact that it just defined the
depcomp variable to '$(top_srcdir)/depcomp'.

My workaround was to copy depcomp into $(top_srcdir) myself and remove
the other copies.  After that everything worked like I thought it
should.  From my scan of the code, it looks like using the
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR macro in configure.in might also make things work, but
I never tested that theory.

Derek

--
Derek Price                      CVS Solutions Architect ( http://CVSHome.org )
mailto:dprice@openavenue.com     OpenAvenue ( http://OpenAvenue.com )
--
Computer Lie #1: You'll never use all that disk space.