Re: install-html and install-pdf improvements

["Joseph S. Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com>]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:30:08 +0000 (UTC)
> > From: "Joseph S. Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com>
> > cc: gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> > 
> > On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes, but I don't understand why did you need to define docdir in
> > > addition to pdfdir and htmldir.  Unlike the other two, docdir is not
> > > used anywhere, so why define it?
> > 
> > The default definitions of htmldir and pdfdir use ${docdir}
> 
> Sorry, I'm not following: what default definitions?  These variables
> are used neither in your patch nor in the current doc/Makefile.in.
> What am I missing?

The default definitions in the toplevel configure.ac, at least.

docdir="\${datarootdir}/doc"
pdfdir="\${docdir}"
htmldir="\${docdir}"

> > (When the src repository moves to newer 
> > autoconf with native support for all these directory variables, the custom 
> > configure code to deal with them will go away, and the makefiles will not 
> > need any changes as they will already define all required variables.)
> 
> Well, you are talking here about something I don't know anything
> about.  But we don't need to install today a change that will only be
> needed at some future time.

I think Ralf is the main person working on updating the by now very out of 
date versions of auto* used in GCC and src, but in general it's a good 
idea to reduce the size of the large and potentially complicated final 
transition patch by making makefiles and configure scripts work where 
possible with both the presently used auto* versions and with the current 
versions that will be used in future.  A definition of datarootdir, for 
example, is at worst harmless but unnecessary with autoconf 2.59, and 
avoids problems with missing definitions of that variable when autoconf 
2.60 or later is used, so can sensibly go in makefiles when any variable 
that autoconf 2.60 and later derives from datarootdir is used.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com