How to properly set "variant-dependent" ACLOCAL_PATH (or better proposals)?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 4, 2015, at 12:44 AM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 
> We have five different wxWidgets ports. Usually it's enough if a port
> that depends on wxWidgets sets something like
>    --with-wxdir=${wxWidgets.wxdir}
> in configure flags, but when a development version of a port has to
> bootstrap first, autoconf has to find wxwin.m4 which lives in
>     "${wxWidgets.prefix}/share/aclocal/wxwin.m4
> 
> ($prefix/Library/Frameworks/wxWidgets.framework/Versions/wxWidgets/3.0/share/aclocal/wxwin.m4)
> 
> The ideal solution would probably be if any of the five wxWidgets
> ports would install the latest version of wxwin.m4 into
> $prefix/share/local/wxwin.m4. But I assume that probably means
> creating a new port just for that single file which seems like a tiny
> bit of an overkill (unless wxWidgets_select would exceptionally be
> used to install also that file).

But files installed by a _select port are for users to use, not for other ports to use.

> An alternative solution is to copy wxwin.m4 into "${worksrcpath}/m4/"
> inside every variant:
>    post-patch {
>        file mkdir ${worksrcpath}/m4
>        file copy  ${wxWidgets.prefix}/share/aclocal/wxwin.m4 ${worksrcpath}/m4
>    }
> 
> Or to set ACLOCAL_PATH during the autoconf phase. But I don't know how
> to do that (which variable has to be set). I tried cornfigure.env, but
> it doesn't seem that those variables would be set when running
> autoconf.cmd.

Did you try autoconf.env?


> I also submitted a feature request to keep a copy of wxwin.m4 in the
> sources (which is what many other projects do), but the developers
> seem happier not to do it, judging from:
>    https://sourceforge.net/p/codeblocks/tickets/163/
> 
> Here's the current version of the port for a reference:
>    http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/devel/codeblocks/Portfile?rev=135776
> 
> What would you suggest to do?