An overview
of the GNU autotools
| Some practical advice about GNU autotools | |
| April 14, 2003 – Stanford Linear Accelerator Center | |
Fabrizio Coccetti |
| Warren did not only have PIPE Dreams at CHEP03 … | |
| He also has Auto-configuration Dreams | |
| How do we handle platform specific issues? | ||
| Providing a different Makefile for each architecture | ||
| Using Autoconf, Automake and Libtool | ||
| The installer needs only | ||
| Bourne shell | ||
| C compilers | ||
| Make program | ||
Some advantages when using GNU autotools
| The installation of a program is straightforward: | |
| ./configure; make; make install | |
| This procedure checks for system parameters, libraries, location of programs, availability of functions and writes a Makefile | |
| ./configure supports many options to overwrite defaults settings |
| dnl Comment … … | |
| AC_INIT(main.c) | |
| AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(project_name, 1.2.8) | |
| AM_PROG_LIBTOOL it supports libtool and shared libraries | |
| AC_PROG_CC (or AC_PROG_CXX) it locates the C (C++) compiler | |
| AC_HEADER_STDC it checks for standard headers | |
| AC_CHECK_HEADERS(sys/time.h /header.h) it checks for headers availability | |
| AC_CHECK_LIB(crypto SSLeay_version) it checks for libraries availability | |
| AC_CHECK_FUNCS(ctime) it checks for functions availability | |
| AC_PROG_INSTALL it checks for BSD compatible install utility | |
| AC_OUTPUT([Makefile]) |
| bin_PROGRAMS = foo | |
| /configure --prefix=… (default /usr/local) | |
| foo_PROGRAMS=foo.c foo.h | |
| noist_PROGRAMS=test | |
| (make compiles, make install does nothing) | |
| EXTRA_DIST=disclaimer.txt |
| foo.c : | |||||
| #include <stdio.h> | |||||
| main() | |||||
| { | |||||
| printf(“Cum grano salis\n"); | |||||
| } | |||||
| Makefile.am : | |||||
| bin_PROGRAMS = foo | |||||
| foo_SOURCES = foo.c | |||||
| configure.ac : | |||||
| AC_INIT(foo.c) | |||||
| AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(latin_words, 0.9) | |||||
| AC_PROG_CC | |||||
| AC_HEADER_STDC | |||||
| AC_PROG_INSTALL | |||||
| AC_OUTPUT([Makefile]) | |||||
| Source Code, configure.ac, Makefile.am | |
| autoscan; aclocal; autoconf | |
| Create NEWS README AUTHORS ChangeLog | |
| automake –add-missing | |
| ./configure; make; make dist | |
| Result: project_name-2.10.tar.gz | |
| aclocal.m4 autom4te-2.53.cache ChangeLog config.status configure.in COPYING install-sh Makefile.am missing NEWS README AUTHORS autoscan.log config.log configure configure.scan INSTALL Makefile.in mkinstalldirs code.c |
| GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html | |
| GNU Autoconf Manual http://www.gnu.org/manual/autoconf |
|
| GNU Automake Manual http://www.gnu.org/manual/automake |
|
| GNU Libtool Manual http://www.gnu.org/manual/libtool |
|
| Learning the GNU development
tools http://autotoolset.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html |
|
| The GNU configure and build
system http://www.airs.com/ian/configure/configure_toc.html |
|
| GNU macro processor (GNU m4) http://www.gnu.org/manual/m4-1.4/m4.html |