Re: [Newbie] Missing LF macros and other scripts

[Al]

Thank you both. That helped greatly. Im making some progress now.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Proulx" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Cc: <address@hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 6:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Newbie] Missing LF macros and other scripts


> Al wrote:
> > Ive been trying to learn to use autoconf, automake etc. using the book
> > ``Learning the GNU development tools''
> > (http://wso.williams.edu/how/info/autoconf/tutorial_toc.html) (and
others).
>
> That is not a bad tutorial.  But things have changed and that has
> gotten a little out of date.
>
> Try this for a little more up to date reference.
>
>   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/
>
> Things do tend to change pretty quick and so even this reference is a
> little out of date too.  Best to read that as a tutorial and then use
> the online texinfo reference for the most up to date information.
>
>   info autoconf
>   info automake
>
> > In this book there are references to a number of scripts and macros that
> > dont seem to be distributed with Cygwin (yes Im a pseudo-unix user...).
For
> > that matter, Ive had a hard time finding any references to them on the
web,
> > despite getting the impression from said book that they are
> > standard.
>
> Adding to what Eric said in his response to your message, those were
> probably written by the author of the tutorial.  Another source of
> that same tutorial is here.  This one is two months newer.
>
>   http://www.amath.washington.edu/~lf/tutorials/autoconf/tutorial_toc.html
>
> Note the ~lf in the path of this reference.  LF_* macros are almost
> certainly the author's macros.  (You can tell I am a newcomer to the
> tools myself because I can only infer things from the archaeological
> remains.)
>
> > * acmkdir (to contruct skeleton package structures and files)
>
> Check out the autoproject package.  Autoproject is a tool that
> interviews the user, then creates a source package for a new program
> which follows the GNU programming standards.  The new package uses
> autoconf to configure itself, and automake to create the Makefile.
> The example generated is quite filled out.  Actually much more there
> than I ever use, a little heavy for my taste, but can be useful to get
> a project going quickly.
>
> If you are using Debian the following will tell you a little about the
> package and install it.
>
>   apt-cache show autoproject
>   apt-get install autoproject
>
> Otherwise if you follow the reference here you should find other
> installation options.  There are rpms available from another site in
> one of the links.  But if you are developer, why else would you be
> using these tools, you should be able to easily install the package
> from source.
>
>   http://www.mv.com/ipusers/vanzandt/
>
> Now that I have said all of that let me really recommend that you just
> walk through the low level details yourself.  Create the Makefile.am
> and configure.ac files manually.  You will understand what is
> happening better and in the long run be ahead.
>
> > * gpl (to create files of various types containing the appropriate GPL
> > statements)
>
> Try:
>
>   autoreconf --install
>
> That will give you copies of the standard GPL COPYING and other files.
>
> > * macros such as LF_CONGIGURE_CC and LF_CONGIGURE_CXX, about which the
> > authors say,
> > [...]
> > This is the recommended way for configuring your C++ compiler.''
>
> If you are using a recent set of the autotools (I am using
> autoconf-2.57 and automake-1.7.3) then the following should work to
> give you a good starting set.
>
>   AC_INIT(projectname,0.0)
>   AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
>   AC_PROG_AWK
>   AC_PROG_INSTALL
>   AC_PROG_LN_S
>   AC_PROG_RANLIB
>   AC_PROG_CC
>   AC_PROG_CXX
>   AC_OUTPUT([ Makefile ])
>
> Starting from here if you look at the online texinfo documentation you
> should be able to get a working system.
>
> Bob
>