Subject: bug#59099: 3-rd party aux files.

From: Van de Bugger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 03:07:34 +0300

Hi,

I have several project using autoconf/automake. I also have several
helper scripts I use in all my makefiles. If I made any improvement in
one of these scripts, I have to copy that script to all my projects. It
is quite inconvenient and error-prone.

I think it would be nice if automake handles my helper scripts like
install-sh, missing, test-driver and other automake aux files. In such
a case all I need is just run

automake -af

to get helper scripts updated.

The only problem is that automake searches for missed aux files in the
*single* directory, /usr/share/automake-1.16 (*). If I use 

automake -af --libdir=$HOME/aux

it breaks automake (it can't find other files, e.g. am/header-vars.am).

So, my question: Is there any way to provide 3-rd party aux files?

---
(*) Putting my aux files to /usr/share/automake-1.16 is obviously a bad
idea. Even if I create package (rpm/deb/whatever else), it will depend
on automake version, so I will have to create almost identical packages
for automake 1.16, 1.15, ...