The newest `aclocal` tool is able to recognize macros in a project-local subdirectory. Instead of copying the macro text to aclocal.m4 it will happily just do an m4_include(m4/filename.m4). That makes it easier than the previous `acinclude` tool, which was copying extra autoconf macros from a project-external repository to the project-local acinclude.m4 where it was again copied to aclocal.m4 by `aclocal`. Additionally, it makes it easier to track singular macro updates with a CVS repository since each extra autoconf macro is visible on its own in the project tree.

The `acincludedir` tool works almost exactly the same as `aclocal`, in fact it's implementation borrows some code from it. But instead of populating "aclocal.m4" it will populate a subdirectory "m4/" with autoconf archive macros. The tool will scan your configure.ac for macros with the prefix "AX_" and look for them in the central macro repository of yours. Therefore, if you have been using AX_PREFIX_CONFIG_H then this tool will copy that AC-Archive macro to "m4/ax_prefix_config_h.m4".

Note that you can install all the macros of this AC-Archive website to your local server. Just download the tarball, unpack the archive, and in the unpacked directory (named "ac-archive-2007.0202") call the command "make install-aclocal" which will copy the macros to your servers aclocal dir - usually in /usr/share/aclocal/. However, the AC-Archive tools will always use subdirectories in there - and the `acincludedir` tool will search the subdirectories for macros. Since it does that alphabetically (by directory name) you can also override some macros - the macros definitions do not need to be unique! (hint: the copied macro in m4/* will have a header line saying which macro was copied).