Re: An autoconf tutorial.

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 09:59 +0900, Andre Caldas wrote:
> Hello, Ed!
> 
>       There are many things that are considered "bad practice". There are 
> many things that are "old deprecated" ways to do things.
> 
>       For example, using the file name "configure.in" is outdated. You should 
> use "configure.ac".
>       I guess (I don't really know) that the reason for this is that "in" is 
> supposed to mean "input". "configure.ac" is an input file to generate a 
> "configure" script. This, however, assumes you have only one program 
> processing the inputs:
>               configure.ac ---> configure
> if you have something like this
>               something.bb ---> something.aa ---> something,
> the extension "in" makes no sense. 

Just think about suffix rules to process these files:

- *.ac is input to autoconf
- *.in is input to configure/config.status.
- *.am is input to automake

I.e. "configure.in" more or less is a historical defect in autoconf :-)

Ralf