Hello, Lars!
> I think autoconf ought to warn the maintainer if $ac_unique_file
> (the AC_INIT argument) isn't found when run. Any reason it shouldn't?
It warns when "configure" is run, but not when "autoconf" is run.
$ cat configure.in
AC_INIT(abc)
AC_OUTPUT
$ autoconf
$ ./configure
configure:508: error: cannot find sources in . or ..
configure: error: cannot find sources in . or ..
Are you suggesting that "autoconf" issues a warning as well?
> The way it is now, autoconf doesn't warn, and when you run configure,
> $srcdir is just set to ".." which causes configure to abort with an
> error for not finding install-sh, which again threw me off finding the
> real cause of the problem...
Autoconf doesn't warn, but configure should exit! If it doesn't work we
need more information: OS, shell, when you last run "cvs update" :-),
configure.in, everything else you find relevant.
Regards,
Pavel Roskin