Re: A Closer Look at GNU AutoTools

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Fri, 05 Sep 2014, Hartmut Holzgraefe wrote:
> * the good old "Goats Book" which is also available online, and seems
>   to have received an update lately:
> 
>     https://www.sourceware.org/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html
> 
>   I still refer to my paper copy every once in a while, but by now
>   that one's so old that a lot of things need to be cross-checked
>   against current autotools documentation

This one is available under the OPL v1.0 with no extra options
(http://opencontent.org/openpub/).

It was updated in 2006 to address autoconf-2.59, automake-1.9.6, libtool
1.5.22.  This _should_ be fresh enough to be useful.

If someone looks it over and states that it is indeed useful for recent
autotools, I believe a pointer to this book should be added to the autotools
(autoconf, automake, libtool) websites.

In fact, the Debian project had it packaged in "non-free" for quite a
while[1].  It was removed in 2008, because "non-free" was carrying the
"unofficial" 1.4.4 edition from http://mdcc.cx/autobook/, which is obsolete
as it was never updated to the 1.5 official release.


[1] The Debian DFSG when applied to documentation is more restrictive than
the GNU free documentation license guidelines.  The autobook complies to the
GNU requirements for a free documentation license, at least according to
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#FreeDocumentationLicenses
since no options of the OPL were exercised in the autobook license.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh