Subject: bug#7773: (lack of) config.h description in manual

From: [email-masked] (Karl Berry)
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 00:00:16 GMT

Hi Ralf,

    I'm closing it, for reasons explained below.

And I'm reopening it, maybe.  Not too clear on debbugs interactions.

    No, I do not think that automake.info should repeat all
    of autoconf.info information.

Me either.  I don't ever intend to suggest creating such redundancy.

      info Autoconf "Defining Directories"

Thanks for the reference.  Now that I know it, I suggest the Automake
manual simply have a sentence with an xref to that node.  Why?  Because
many people (e.g., almost all the new GNU maintainers) come to the
autotools through automake.  A pointer would help them (just as it would
have helped me, but anyway)

For example, as part of the amhello explanation:

--- ORIG/automake.texi	2011-01-02 00:24:40.000000000 -0800
+++ automake.texi	2011-01-03 15:57:50.000000000 -0800
@@ -1737,4 +1737,9 @@
 @file{README} during @code{make install}.
 
+One thing not covered in this example is accessing the installation
+directory values (@pxref{Standard Directory Variables}) from your
+program code, that is, getting them into @file{config.h}.  For this,
+@pxref{Defining Directories,,, autoconf, Autoconf}.
+
 
 @node Generalities

    That does not work, and the above node explains why: the GNU Coding
    Standards forbid it, implicitly.

Hmm, I'm not so sure that the GCS forbids doing the right thing (or that
it has to stay that way even if it does), but I won't pursue it further.
Life goes on.

Thanks,
k