How can I make autogen.sh error if AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG is missing?
I could just wget the .m4 file into the source tree and include it, is that a better option than giving an error?
Here are the details:
I just added AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG(...) to my configure.ac and ran ./autogen.sh, which succeeded.
Because autoconf-archive wasn't installed, ./configure gave this error:
./configure: 5358: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")
the ./configure line at 5358 looks like this below because the macro didn't exist, so bourne shell died with the error above.
AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG(-fcx-fortran-rules, CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -fcx-fortran-rules")
As a rule, when I use macros in configure.ac whose name begins with neither AC_ nor AM_, I make sure that autoconf treats those macro names occuring in the generated configure file as an error.
In your case, that would be
m4_pattern_forbid([AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG])dnl
AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG([...what...], [...ever...])
AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG([...and...], [...more...])