[Sugar-devel] Automake-fu question

[Andrés Ambrois]

Hello list!

To provide mobile-broadband-provider-info support for the 3G feature, I need 
to parse some system files, namely /usr/share/zoneinfo/iso3166.tab and 
/usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml.  In order for 
packagers to override those locations I created a config.py.in file that looks 
like this:

PROVIDERS_PATH = "@prefix@/share/mobile-broadband-provider-
info/serviceproviders.xml"
PROVIDERS_FORMAT_SUPPORTED = "2.0"
COUNTRY_CODES_PATH = "@prefix@/share/zoneinfo/iso3166.tab"

Which is then converted by a make rule in Makefile.am into config.py. I 
understand this is the recommended approach when using autotools [0]. 

One of the problems is that this breaks jhbuild, because it uses
--prefix=/path/to/jhbuild/install. The other is that by default @prefix@ expands 
to /usr/local/, which is not the usual location for these files. 

The full patch is [1], if you're interested.

Cheers!

[0] http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Installation-
Directory-Variables
[1] http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1630
-- 
  -Andrés