On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 6:01 PM Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > AC_INIT(m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagename]), > m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packageversion]), > m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagebugreport])) > > This works fine when building in the source directory. > > The problem I am encountering is that in the context of AC_INIT and > m4_esyscmd, I do not know how to obtain the path to the top of the > source directory. The trick here is that these shell commands will be executed when you run autoconf, *not* when you run configure. And you have to run autoconf with the current working directory equal to the top of the source tree *anyway*. So the answer is ". will be the top of the source tree." This is why automake's rule for regenerating configure from configure.ac does `cd $(top_srcdir) && $(AUTOCONF)`. Autoconf itself does something similar and it works reliably: (quoting https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/autoconf.git/tree/configure.ac#n22) AC_INIT([GNU Autoconf], m4_esyscmd([build-aux/git-version-gen .tarball-version]), [bug-autoconf@xxxxxxx]) I presume this is *not* working reliably for you or you wouldn't have asked the question, so could you go into a little more detail about how you invoked autoconf and/or configure and what went wrong? zw
