Re: order to run autotools

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 11:17 -0500, Bob Rossi wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 05:15:00PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 10:59 -0500, Bob Rossi wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I'm learning a lot about the autotools. I want to say thanks to the list
> > > for teaching me so much! 
> > > 
> > > I have a quick question, I run the autotools in this order,
> > 
> > With recent auto*tools, you should use autoreconf instead
> 
> I'm using recent tools. I should use autoreconf instead of autoconf even
> if I'm autoconf'ing for the first time? I do this when I check out the
> tree for the first time.

Yes.

autoreconf -fi
or
autoreconf -fis

should do exactly what you want.

> > >   aclocal -I config
> > >   autoconf -f
> > >   autoheader
> > >   automake -a
> > > when I do an out-of-tree configure it works fine, but when I do the make
> > > I get,
> > >   cd ../cgdb && /bin/bash
> > >   /home/bob/rcs/svn/cgdb/cgdb.testsuite/cgdb/config/missing --run
> > >   autoheader
> > > 
> > > Am I doing something wrong or is this expected?
> > The former, the order is wrong. But unless you're using ancient
> > auto*tools, you're better off using autoreconf.
> 
> What's the order supposed to be then?
I intentionally did not answer this, because there is no "100% bullet-proof" 
answer.

In most (90%) cases, when using ancient autotools it was:

aclocal
automake
autoconf
autoheader

> > Besides this, there is a (AFAICT, yet undiscovered) bug somewhere, which
> > occasionally triggers "seemingly spurious" autoheader runs.
> 
> I can reproduce this every time.
Did you use autoreconf?

Ralf