13.4.8 aclocal.m4 at top level

If you do not have an aclocal.m4 file in your distribution, the simplest is to concatenate the files build-to-host.m4, gettext.m4, host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4, iconv.m4, lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4, nls.m4, po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s m4/ directory into a single file.

If you already have an aclocal.m4 file, then you will have to merge the said macro files into your aclocal.m4. Note that if you are upgrading from a previous release of GNU gettext, you should most probably replace the macros (AM_GNU_GETTEXT, etc.), as they usually change a little from one release of GNU gettext to the next. Their contents may vary as we get more experience with strange systems out there.

You should be using GNU automake 1.9 or newer. With it, you need to copy the files build-to-host.m4, gettext.m4, host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4, iconv.m4, lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4, nls.m4, po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s m4/ directory to a subdirectory named m4/ and add the line

ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4

to your top level Makefile.am.

If you are using GNU automake 1.10 or newer, it is even easier: Add the line

ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = --install -I m4

to your top level Makefile.am, and run ‘aclocal --install -I m4’. This will copy the needed files to the m4/ subdirectory automatically, before updating aclocal.m4.

These macros check for the internationalization support functions and related informations. Hopefully, once stabilized, these macros might be integrated in the standard Autoconf set, because this piece of m4 code will be the same for all projects using GNU gettext.