On Mon, Aug 03, 1998 at 04:23:26PM -0700, Darren Benham wrote: > Where is a good source to learn what's behind the ./configure scripts? Is it > a > package or is there any documentation or convention?
You already know that they are created by autoconf. To lift the magic somewhat, I'll write a short introduction. Autoconf parses configure.in to create an installation script. configure.in is a m4 script, and contains macros to test for various libraries etc. You also specify which Makefiles to generate etc. Each makefile to generate needs a Makefile.in, too. (Those can be generated from Makefile.am's with automake, yet another generalization). In the Makefiles, variable substitution is done. Well, the good thing is that you just need to run configure, and then make; make install. And there are standard options for cross-compiling, installation directory etc. To use it, you have to specify the correct options. In Debian, you want to install the software in /usr, so you do in debian/rules: ./configure --prefix=/usr But then, you want to have the files copied to your temporary build directory, so you do under the binary targets: $(MAKE) install --prefix=debian/tmp/usr You see, it's very powerful. You even build in a subdirectory for easy cleaning: mkdir build; cd build ../configure --prefix=/usr This will create all files below the build/ directory, and won't touch the source directories. It's kinda neat. I was confused by autoconf, automake and libtool, because a lot of things happened and you don't know what to type to get what you want (it's like debstd, only more complex :), but it works great when you get used to it. The tools are written in a way that allows you to run aclocal;automake;autoconf before you ship your package (make dist; make dist-check). Then the one who compiles the package does not need to have autoconf installed. The complete set of tools makes a good addition to the Debian package tools. Somebody even started to write autoconf macros etc for Debian packaging, but I never heard again from this project (is it still living?). Thank you, Marcus -- "Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
