Re: some general help needed

[Matej Tyc]

On Sat, 2008-08-16 at 10:50 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

Thank you for your replies. I have accumulated a list of very useful
links that may help me to deal with the problem.
For instance, John Calcote has sent me a link to his tutorial about
autotools that I find exceedingly useful and that I haven't been able to
google earlier:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/books/autotools_a_guide_to_autoconf_automake_libtool

I absolutely don't agree with the reasoning why not to have a wiki.
Autotools don't have an official tutorial. Wiki is good since autotools
are changing and wikis are easy to update.
I am going to gather many useful experiences and I would like to post
them to some place where they will be available for everyone for a long
time and where they will be easy to find.
The worst thing that can happen to a wiki is spam infestation, so why
not to at least try it? It can be useful for many beings!

I look forward to future colaboration
Matej

btw: Posts have "wrong" header in the way that when one replies to them, one 
will ommit the mailing list. 
I have received replies that went only to me and I made that mistake as well.
Other mailing lists usually behave differently...
So what do you think of this behavior?

> Hi Matej,
> 
> Besides what was already mentioned:
> 
> * Matej Tyc wrote on Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 02:40:53PM CEST:
> >     a) What is some "standard root project directory layout" that doesn't
> > cause problems and that everybody likes? I have learned that it is good
> > to have /src directory, /build-aux dir, /m4 dir and maybe /bin dir, all
> > from different sources. Nothing "official" from experienced autotools
> > users that would say 'Don't put your object files to the root since it
> > becomes a terrible mess afterwards' (wxWidgets project behaves like
> > this)
> 
> Mostly a matter of taste.  Having build-aux and m4 is good to keep many
> helper files out of the way.
> 
> Please allow to have the build tree completely separate from the source
> tree.
> 
> >     b) What is considered to be the smart way how to build documentation
> > for the project? How to include doc build to autools setup?
> 
> Do you already have documentation in some form?
> If not, consider what you and your peer developers are familiar with,
> otherwise you can try texinfo.
> 
> >     c) How to deal with the fact that the project is multiplatform and the
> > build process is not mplatform independent? 
> 
> Try to off-load as much of the platform dependencies to autoconf.
> The GNU Coding Standards has some guidance, aside from the Autoconf
> manual.  More help here if you ask more specific questions.
> 
> > 2. I have a library and I would like to make life easy for people that
> > will use it and choose autotools to manage their projects. What is the
> > standard/simple/portable/smart way how to do this? 
> > I have seen a very long macro (AM_PATH_LIB(...)) and some script
> > (lib-config) that hasn't always been working very well (problems with
> > cross-compilation, ...) How you do this, please?
> 
> Use libtool and pkg-config.
> 
> > What about an autotools wiki? Autotools are considered "arcane and hard
> > to use." But it is mainly due to lack of documentation that young
> > developers require, don't you think? 
> 
> There is a good tutorial at
> <http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~adl/autotools.html>.
> It's considerably newer and more up to date than the Autobook.
> 
> Somebody has started writing on a new book recently IIRC.
> 
> Requests for a wiki have come up before; one problem with a wiki is that
> we felt that it would need to be maintained by somebody experienced.  We
> prefer that good advice end up in the manuals, or maybe in the above
> tutorial
> 
> > Please, don't underestimate user-friendliness!
> 
> Good point.  As a first, if you ask specific questions on what you tried
> and what doesn't work, chances are really high you will be helped on
> these lists.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ralf