[asterisk-users] Running configure from subdirectory of source tree

[Gianluca Merlo]

Hello everyone,

I would like to seek your advice regarding a build (or rather "configure")
problem I am running into. For reference, tests are all relative to a build
from a 1.8.26.0 tarball, on Debian Wheezy.

I would like to understand if it is possible, and if any of you have tried,
to build Asterisk from a subdirectory of the source tree, i.e., from a
clean source tree

# mkdir my-build-directory
# cd my-build-directory
# ../configure
# make

I lack a proper amount of knowledge on the matter, but I think that this
should be "legit" with a common autotools build toolchain. Tests suggest
that (at least in my case) this is not working with

configure: error: cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool in `pwd`
> ".."/`pwd`
>

Looking in the configure process in detail, the failure seem to follow the
checks (/bin/sh -x output)

+ for ac_dir in '`pwd`' '"$srcdir"/`pwd`'
> + test -f /home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/install-sh
> + test -f /home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/install.sh
> + test -f /home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/shtool
> + for ac_dir in '`pwd`' '"$srcdir"/`pwd`'
> + test -f ..//home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/install-sh
> + test -f ..//home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/install.sh
> + test -f ..//home/gian/src/asterisk-1.8.26.0/my-build-directory/shtool


It looks to me that despite checking "`pwd`" leads to a correct behaviour,
checking "../`pwd`" is not correct. I seem to understand that this
behaviour was introduced in configure.ac at r259848, by adding

AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR(`pwd`)
>

The log for the commit reports

------------------------------------------------------------------------
> r259848 | qwell | 2010-04-28 22:32:14 +0200 (Wed, 28 Apr 2010) | 9 lines
>
> Merged revisions 259847 via svnmerge from
> https://origsvn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/branches/1.4
>
> ........
>   r259847 | qwell | 2010-04-28 15:30:21 -0500 (Wed, 28 Apr 2010) | 1 line
>
>   Add AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR to configure script, so systems without install
> can use install-sh from our source dir.
> ........
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Isn't the default behaviour for autoconf enough (
http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Optional.html)? Can
this be considered as a bug in Asterisk's the build system, preventing an
otherwise working build scenario (i.e. configuring and building in a
subdirectory of the source tree)?

Thank you in advance for your help

Gianluca
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20140305/2ade8a2a/attachment.html>