I have a small project
Directory Structure looks like this:
/Project/ ---> Build system files go here
|
|
|______/project/ ---> C src and headers go here
|
|
|_______/docs ---> *.txt *.doc *.html
Project/Makefile.am
SUBDIRS = project
docsdir = $(datadir)/project/docs
docs_DATA = project/docs/*
EXTRA_DIST = project.spec INSTALL-WIN32
.PHONY: $(DATA)
Project/project/Makefile.am
bin_PROGRAMS = project
project_SOURCES = *.c *.h
EXTRA_DIST = docs
I have 2 problems, first is that this works perfect for
make
make clean
make dist
make install
but make distcheck and make uninstall don't...
However when running make distcheck the make install target fails for the DATA.
However thats the easy problem ( I'm pretty sure these are automake bugs )
The hard problem is that on this list and in alot of other places I keep seeing
references to "A really good book" and some other good docs on the "autotools"
I'm gonna try not to be to windy here, yet informative and enlightening...
I've been working on this project for several months now learning C as I go ONE
concept at a time....
I put those .am's together myself! BUT it took me two months. Redhat did a great job
writing that book but it's absolutely worthless. The book spends more than half of its
breath talking about libtool libraries and 2/3 of whats left on autoconf and only
lightly touches on automake. The examples for automake are poor.
The writing style assumes too much knowledge. Alot more often now you'll be seeing
guys like me (I'm 43 have a family and full time job and come to the unix world from
the windows world and I've been computing since before IBMPC 64k 4.77mhz came out) due
to the fast paced growth linux. Not the typical project participant!
Consequently a book that assumes way too much knowledge and really a program
as complicated automake, being so poorly documented, is a real roadblock for guys like
me getting involved in open-source projects.
Here are problems I found:
PRIMARIES are very briefly touched on but never fully explained
and no where is there a list of all valid PRIMARIES
For me noticing that made me wonder what else wasn't being said.
I saw references to other parts of automake commands yet no lists of valid parts
(keywords?) one specific example noinst ... If _DIST and _DATA are valid PRIMARIES
what is noinst_ ?
And this whole thing about invalid variables!!!! Never once does that book bother to
drop to the level of explaining those! But I need that level of explanation and so do
alot of other people! Add to that confusion the libtool portion of the book replacing
the dot in filenames with underscores. (I actually understand why that's done [being
only slightly versed in perl]) My point is a well documented program wouldn't require
the user to be an expert in 5 other programming languages to be able to use it and
more importantly it's documentation. And I stand back on what I infered before. I
don't have the time to learn 5 langs just to be able to use automake. And I should'nt
have to.
In closing, I'm currently I'm using automake 1.6. The improvements in your software
since the version I started with, have been wonderful! Automake is HUGHLY important to
free-software (free as in freedom). However at this point it is also one of three
tools creating HUGH roadblocks for me and many others like me from getting involved in
open source projects.
Because of poor documentation...
Respectfully,
Calvin Arndt
Linux is not just the reallm of college "CS" majors anymore!
