AM_ICONV/AC_LIB_RPATH/config.rpath never-ending story

On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 05:10:04AM -0500, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Follow-up Comment #1, sr #110435 (project autoconf):
> 
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gettext/2011-10/msg00012.html
> > When a project wants to only use AM_ICONV and none of the other gettext
> autoconf macros
> 
> If your package only wants to use iconv() but no support for localized
> messages, it should use the gnulib module 'iconv'. This module includes the
> config.rpath file.
Is there any way to use gnulib's iconv from autotools, for configuration
purposes?
 
> 
> autoreconf deals with gettext for convenience. It does not know about gnulib
> modules.
> 
> > projects which needs to use AM_ICONV started providing their own
> "autogen.sh" script which copies required file config.rpath to current
> directory and then run autoreconf.

Indeed, this is what we do for sagemath:
https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/27823#comment:17
(get the location of config.rpath by scraping the body of gettextize
script and copy it to our config/ directory)

Is there a sane way to get config.rpath into an autotools project that
does not use gettext?
It's needed for AM_ICONV macro, 
which is calling AC_LIB_RPATH, which uses config.rpath

(of course, only truly brave use AM_ICONV, according to Paul Eggert:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2002-09/msg00181.html)

Perhaps it is an autoconf bug, as it boils down to AC_LIB_RPATH unable
to find config.rpath.

Thanks,
Dmitrii

> 
> This is not future-proof: if new files (.m4 files or else) are needed as new
> dependencies of iconv.m4, this method will not know about it.
> 
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