https://github.com/srijanshetty/autotools-sandbox
A small primer of autotools
https://github.com/srijanshetty/autotools-sandbox
Last synced: about 2 months ago
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A small primer of autotools
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/srijanshetty/autotools-sandbox
- Owner: srijanshetty
- Created: 2015-03-14T12:26:03.000Z (about 10 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2015-03-15T04:13:10.000Z (about 10 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-01-17T19:51:22.357Z (3 months ago)
- Language: C
- Size: 129 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 3
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# Autotools Introduction
- This is a bare bones repository which illustrates how to use autotools.
- We'll demonstrate the use of autoconf, aclocal and automake.
## autoconf
- *autoconf* is used to create **configure** files from a *configure.ac* template.
- In this example, we use **AC_PROG_CC** to ascertain the C compiler and instruct that we will *automake* will be used to generate **Makefiles**.
## aclocal
- *aclocal* reads an autoconf file and collects all the macros that will be needed when we run *autoconf*.
- *autoconf* only has a base set of macros, *aclocal* provides macros for *automake* and other custom libraries.
- After creating *configure.ac*, use run the following set of commands to generate files.
$ aclocal
$ autoconf
## automake
- *automake* generates a *Makefile.in* file from a *Makefile.am* template.
- The beauty of *Makefile.am* is that you only specify the target file and the source file, the rest of the details are plugged in by the tool.
- *automake* compiles the *Makefile.am* file to a *Makefile.in* file which is very close to being a *Makefile* but lacks infromaiton which is plugged in by *configure* like the name of the compiler.
$ automake --add-missing --foreign
- **add-missing** generates additional missing files like **install-sh**. **foreign** instructs _automake_ that we are not following *GNU* standard.
## autoreconf
- When using tools from the *autotools* suite, we have to make sure that the tools are run in the correct order, which become kind of a pain when we start using additional tools like autolib. This pain is mitigated by *autoreconf* which executes all these tools in the right order.
$ autoreconf --install --verbose