[Buildroot] [PATCH] package/autotool infra: create missing m4 dir

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Hello,

Le Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:48:33 +0200,
"Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998 at free.fr> a écrit :

> When a package needs to be auto-reconfigured, it may be missing the m4/
> sub-dir, especially when we use the package from its VCS.
> 
> Grep configure.{ac,in} tp find the location of the m4/ sub-dir (defaulting
> to the root of the package), and create it.
> 
> Signed-off-by: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998 at free.fr>
> 
> ---
> 
> This is a tentative patch for RFC.
> ---
>  package/pkg-autotools.mk |    1 +
>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/package/pkg-autotools.mk b/package/pkg-autotools.mk
> index 785daab..f199ac6 100644
> --- a/package/pkg-autotools.mk
> +++ b/package/pkg-autotools.mk
> @@ -173,6 +173,7 @@ endif
>  #
>  define AUTORECONF_HOOK
>  	@$$(call MESSAGE,"Autoreconfiguring")
> +	M4_DIR=$$$$(sed -r -e '/.*AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR\(\[(.*)\]\).*/!d; s//\1/g;' $$($$(PKG)_SRCDIR)configure.*) && mkdir -p "$$($$(PKG)_SRCDIR)$$$${M4_DIR:-m4}"
>  	$(Q)cd $$($$(PKG)_SRCDIR) && $(AUTORECONF) $$($$(PKG)_AUTORECONF_OPT)
>  	$(Q)if test "$$($$(PKG)_LIBTOOL_PATCH)" = "YES"; then \
>  		for i in `find $$($$(PKG)_SRCDIR) -name ltmain.sh`; do \

Thanks for doing this. I am not yet totally convinced, but it needs
some discussion. I find this approach a bit fragile, and I'm not sure
it will cover all possibilities: I've seen packages doing more funky
things than just creating the AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR directory in their
autogen.sh/bootstrap script. For example, calling glibtoolize or
intltoolize, which I'm not sure are automatically being called by
autoreconf (but I may be wrong).

So, I see two alternative approaches to yours (I'm not saying those
alternatives are better, just mentioning them to open the discussion):

 1. Add an explicit <pkg>_AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR option, which defaults to
    m4, and which can be overridden by the package .mk file. The
    autotools infrastructure then creates in the source tree a
    directory of this name before doing the autoreconfiguration.

 2. Make the autoreconf command configurable. I.e, by default the
    autotools infrastructure does $(AUTORECONF)
    $$($$(PKG)_AUTORECONF_OPT), but maybe we could use a
    $$($$(PKG)_AUTORECONF_CMDS) instead, so that you could do 'mkdir
    $(@D)/m4; $(@D)/autogen.sh' if you need, etc.

Thoughts?

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com