Hi all, I do not know well the Autotools, but regarding the past thread 'AC_INIT receiving PACKAGE_VERSION from outside', I wrote a little shell script that allows to generate a version file that can be both sourced by shell scripts and included by M4, as suggested by Alexandre Duret-Lutz previously. This is a work-around to hardcoded version numbers in AC_INIT. For example, in one's configure.ac there could be : # Unfortunately, the new syntax for AC_INIT does not allow for variable # substitution. As it is way simpler to have the version information in only # one place, this has been achieved thanks to the 'version.inc' file, which can # be sourced by shell scripts and included by M4 scripts. # 'version.inc' can be generated thanks to the 'generateVersionFile.sh' script. AC_INIT([Ceylan, m4_normalize(m4_include([conf/build/version.inc])), ./generateVersionFile.sh 3 0 0 generates following version.inc file : dnl="This rather convoluted file allows to centralize version numbers while " dnl="being able to be both sourced by shell scripts and included by M4." dnl="It can be generated by the 'generateVersionFile.sh' script." dnl=; MAJOR=3; MINOR=0; RELEASE=0 ; m4_hiding_string="\ 3.0.0 dnl " Here is generateVersionFile.sh : """ #!/bin/sh VERSION_FILENAME="version.inc" USAGE="Usage : "`basename $0`" <major> <minor> <release> : generates a file named '$VERSION_FILENAME' which can set version numbers both when sourced by a shell script (setting the MAJOR_VERSION, MINOR_VERSION and RELEASE variables appropriately) and included by a M4 script. This is useful as a workaround to Autoconf AC_INIT behaviour." if test "$#" -ne 3 ; then echo $USAGE 1>&2 exit 1 fi echo "dnl=\"This rather convoluted file allows to centralize version numbers while \"" > $VERSION_FILENAME echo "dnl=\"being able to be both sourced by shell scripts and included by M4.\"" >> $VERSION_FILENAME echo "dnl=\"It can be generated by the 'generateVersionFile.sh' script.\"" >> $VERSION_FILENAME echo "dnl=; MAJOR=$1; MINOR=$2; RELEASE=$3 ; m4_hiding_string=\"\\" >> $VERSION_FILENAME echo "$1.$2.$3" >> $VERSION_FILENAME echo "dnl \"" >> $VERSION_FILENAME echo "'$VERSION_FILENAME' has been generated." """ Apparently sourcing it is ok and my autogen process generated appropriate files with these settings. No specific dependency is to be enforced, if I understood well. Please feel free to comment on it and propose improvements ! (I cannot subscribe to this list, could you cc: me as well ?) Regards, Olivier Boudeville. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf