5.5 Macro search path

By default, aclocal searches for `.m4' files in the following directories, in this order:

acdir-APIVERSION

This is where the `.m4' macros distributed with automake itself are stored. APIVERSION depends on the automake release used; for automake 1.6.x, APIVERSION = 1.6.

acdir

This directory is intended for third party `.m4' files, and is configured when automake itself is built. This is `@datadir@/aclocal/', which typically expands to `${prefix}/share/aclocal/'. To find the compiled-in value of acdir, use the --print-ac-dir option (see section 5.4 aclocal options).

As an example, suppose that automake-1.6.2 was configured with --prefix=/usr/local. Then, the search path would be:

1. `/usr/local/share/aclocal-1.6/'
2. `/usr/local/share/aclocal/'

As explained in (see section 5.4 aclocal options), there are several options that can be used to change or extend this search path.