Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] RFC: Add fallback path to get_datafile_dir

[Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>]

Joerg Mayer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> as the problem recently popped up how to load auxillary files in the source
> directory that have not been installed to their final paths, I've created a
> patch that will add a fallback directory path to get_datafile_dir.
> So far get_datafile_dir would check wether some magic variable were set to
> locate generated (i.e. compiled) stuff inside the build dir instead of the
> install dir. This patch allows to override this behaviour to search in the
> specified directory relative to the source dir. If the fallback path is
> given as NULL, the previous behaviour is used. As the path may now be
> different with different invocations, the caching of the path had to go.
>
> Example call:
>
> WIRESHARK_RUN_FROM_BUILD_DIRECTORY=1 WIRESHARK_SRC_DIR=../trunk ./wireshark

This would solve https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5664

which would make me quite happy because I rarely build in-source-tree.

But: could it be done automagically?  For example, 'configure' sets up 
$top_srcdir appropriately; could we somehow get that variable passed 
into the libtool script (./wireshark) or...?

I suppose it would not be a good idea to embed $top_srcdir in the 
resulting binaries and the libtool script only exists when using auto*, 
so I guess your approach does make the most sense.