(automake-1.16.info)Future of aclocal

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6.3.6 The Future of ‘aclocal’
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‘aclocal’ is expected to disappear.  This feature really should not be
offered by Automake.  Automake should focus on generating ‘Makefile’s;
dealing with M4 macros really is Autoconf’s job.  The fact that some
people install Automake just to use ‘aclocal’, but do not use ‘automake’
otherwise is an indication of how that feature is misplaced.

   The new implementation will probably be done slightly differently.
For instance, it could enforce the ‘m4/’-style layout discussed in Note:
Local Macros.

   We have no idea when and how this will happen.  This has been
discussed several times in the past, but someone still has to commit to
that non-trivial task.

   From the user point of view, ‘aclocal’’s removal might turn out to be
painful.  There is a simple precaution that you may take to make that
switch more seamless: never call ‘aclocal’ yourself.  Keep this guy
under the exclusive control of ‘autoreconf’ and Automake’s rebuild
rules.  Hopefully you won’t need to worry about things breaking, when
‘aclocal’ disappears, because everything will have been taken care of.
If otherwise you used to call ‘aclocal’ directly yourself or from some
script, you will quickly notice the change.

   Many packages come with a script called ‘bootstrap’ or ‘autogen.sh’,
that will just call ‘aclocal’, ‘libtoolize’, ‘gettextize’ or
‘autopoint’, ‘autoconf’, ‘autoheader’, and ‘automake’ in the right
order.  Actually this is precisely what ‘autoreconf’ can do for you.  If
your package has such a ‘bootstrap’ or ‘autogen.sh’ script, consider
using ‘autoreconf’.  That should simplify its logic a lot (less things
to maintain, yum!), it’s even likely you will not need the script
anymore, and more to the point you will not call ‘aclocal’ directly
anymore.

   For the time being, third-party packages should continue to install
public macros into ‘/usr/share/aclocal/’.  If ‘aclocal’ is replaced by
another tool it might make sense to rename the directory, but supporting
‘/usr/share/aclocal/’ for backward compatibility should be really easy
provided all macros are properly written (Note: Extending aclocal).