44 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
44 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
Autoconf, Automake and Libtool are packages for making your software
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more portable and to simplify building it--usually on someone else's
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system. Software portability and effective build systems are crucial
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aspects of modern software engineering practice. It is unlikely
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that a software project would be started today with the expectation
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that the software would run on only one platform. Hardware constraints
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may change the choice of platform, new customers with different
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kinds of systems may emerge or your vendor might introduce incompatible
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changes in newer versions of their operating system. In addition,
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tools that make building software easier and less error prone are
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valuable.
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Autoconf is a tool that helps make your packages more portable by
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performing tests to discover system characteristics before the
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package is compiled. Your source code can then adapt to these
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differences.
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Automake is a tool for generating Makefiles--descriptions of what
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to build--that conform to a number of standards. Automake substantially
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simplifies the process of describing the organization of a package
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and performs additional functions such as dependency tracking between
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source files.
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Libtool is a command line interface to the compiler and linker that
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makes it easy to portably generate static and shared libraries,
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regardless of the platform it is running on.
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This book is a tutorial for Autoconf, Automake and Libtool, hereafter
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referred to as the GNU Autotools. The GNU manuals that accompany
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each tools adequately document each tool in isolation. Until now,
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there has not been a guide that has described how these tools work
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together.
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Thanks go to New Riders (www.newriders.com) for allowing this document to
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be licensed under the Open Publication License and redistributed freely.
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Copyright (c) 2000 by Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey and Ian
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Lance Taylor. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms
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and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License,
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draft v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently
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available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
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See ${HOMEPAGE} for errata.
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