In Autoconf 2.60, the set of directory variables has changed, and the defaults of some variables have been adjusted (see Installation Directory Variables) to changes in the GNU Coding Standards. Notably, datadir, infodir, and mandir are now expressed in terms of datarootdir. If you are upgrading from an earlier Autoconf version, you may need to adjust your files to ensure that the directory variables are substituted correctly (see Defining Directories), and that a definition of datarootdir is in place. For example, in a Makefile.in, adding
datarootdir = @datarootdir@
is usually sufficient. If you use Automake to create Makefile.in, it will add this for you.
To help with the transition, Autoconf warns about files that seem to use
datarootdir
without defining it. In some cases, it then expands
the value of $datarootdir
in substitutions of the directory
variables. The following example shows such a warning:
$ cat configure.ac AC_INIT AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile]) AC_OUTPUT $ cat Makefile.in prefix = @prefix@ datadir = @datadir@ $ autoconf $ configure configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile config.status: WARNING: Makefile.in seems to ignore the --datarootdir setting $ cat Makefile prefix = /usr/local datadir = ${prefix}/share
Usually one can easily change the file to accommodate both older and newer Autoconf releases:
$ cat Makefile.in prefix = @prefix@ datarootdir = @datarootdir@ datadir = @datadir@ $ configure configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating Makefile $ cat Makefile prefix = /usr/local datarootdir = ${prefix}/share datadir = ${datarootdir}
In some cases, however, the checks may not be able to detect that a suitable
initialization of datarootdir
is in place, or they may fail to detect
that such an initialization is necessary in the output file. If, after
auditing your package, there are still spurious configure warnings about
datarootdir
, you may add the line
AC_DEFUN([AC_DATAROOTDIR_CHECKED])
to your configure.ac to disable the warnings. This is an exception
to the usual rule that you should not define a macro whose name begins with
AC_
(see Macro Names).