Re: [Newbie] Missing LF macros and other scripts

[Bob Proulx]

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gotten a little out of date.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little out of date too.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