This directory contains sample files that should be in pretty much every MATE application.

To make this work both for MATE Applications inside and outside the MATE repository tree I did the following:

• There is an `INSIDE_MATE_COMMON' automake conditional which is defined in two places:

  • macros/aclocal-includes.m4 defines this to always be false.

  • mate-common/configure.in does not include anything from macros and defines this to be true.

• We use this automake conditional in the macros/Makefile.am to install $(MACROS), autogen.sh, mate-common.m4 and a newly created mate-macros.dep in `$(datadir)/aclocal/mate'.

  Since aclocal doesn't look in subdirectories we can safely install them there even when compiling from the repository.

  Also, there is no need to make any change to any existing application in the MATE repository tree - really fine...

• When we're outside the MATE repository tree, we simply need to tell aclocal that it should also look in `$(datadir)/aclocal/mate' and it will find all the macros.

  There is a `mate-skel' module in the repository that can be used as a starting point when writing a new MATE application that should be used outside the repository.

February 4, 1999, Martin Baulig martin@home-of-linux.org