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CoderMan
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Joined: 10 Aug 2009
Posts: 173
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 Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:23 pm Post subject: Autotools tips from package maintainers...? |
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Hi. I'm working on my first possibly influential FOSS program (in c++). I just learned autotools (heaven help me) and I am trying to set up everything properly. I hope to eventually submit my project to Gentoo, and I want to make things as easy as possibly for them down the road. I was just curious if any package maintainers happen to have written a blog post or some such document enumerating tips or suggestions on proper autotools setup.
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mikegpitt
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Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 3224
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:43 pm Post subject: Re: Autotools tips from package maintainers...? |
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| CoderMan wrote: | | Hi. I'm working on my first possibly influential FOSS program (in c++). I just learned autotools (heaven help me) and I am trying to set up everything properly. I hope to eventually submit my project to Gentoo, and I want to make things as easy as possibly for them down the road. I was just curious if any package maintainers happen to have written a blog post or some such document enumerating tips or suggestions on proper autotools setup. |
Personally, I have found it to be most simple to use an IDE that generates the autoconf/makefile information.
If you are working on a graphical application, glade does a good job at generating what you need. A command-line application would be better built using anjuta or kdevelop.
I always code using a terminal and vi, but for the initial setup using the IDE really makes things easier. |
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few
Guru
Joined: 03 Mar 2008
Posts: 448
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VoidMage
Watchman
Joined: 14 Oct 2006
Posts: 6196
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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As I (and other people) repeatedly stated kdevelop is a VERY poor choice
for an autotools project. |
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CoderMan
Apprentice
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
Posts: 173
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:24 pm Post subject: Re: Autotools tips from package maintainers...? |
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| mikegpitt wrote: | | CoderMan wrote: | | Hi. I'm working on my first possibly influential FOSS program (in c++). I just learned autotools (heaven help me) and I am trying to set up everything properly. I hope to eventually submit my project to Gentoo, and I want to make things as easy as possibly for them down the road. I was just curious if any package maintainers happen to have written a blog post or some such document enumerating tips or suggestions on proper autotools setup. |
Personally, I have found it to be most simple to use an IDE that generates the autoconf/makefile information.
If you are working on a graphical application, glade does a good job at generating what you need. A command-line application would be better built using anjuta or kdevelop.
I always code using a terminal and vi, but for the initial setup using the IDE really makes things easier. |
Thanks for the suggestion, but to be honest I've been using Emacs since I learned how to write "#!/usr/bin/perl" in a terminal years ago. I don't think I could handle working inside a GUI IDE. It's sort of a religious thing now.
I actually have set up the core autoconf/automake files, but I am looking more for suggestions on how to tweak it.
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Like computers but don't like programming? Then you missed the whole point.
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mikegpitt
Advocate
Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 3224
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:28 pm Post subject: Re: Autotools tips from package maintainers...? |
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| CoderMan wrote: | | Thanks for the suggestion, but to be honest I've been using Emacs since I learned how to write "#!/usr/bin/perl" in a terminal years ago. I don't think I could handle working inside a GUI IDE. It's sort of a religious thing now. |
That's why I wrote this 
| mikegpitt wrote: | I always code using a terminal and vi, but for the initial setup using the IDE really makes things easier.
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I hate using IDE's as well... use it to set up your build environment, and then use the command line and your editor of choice thereafter. |
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SamuliSuominen
Retired Dev
Joined: 30 Sep 2005
Posts: 2133
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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| VoidMage wrote: | As I (and other people) repeatedly stated kdevelop is a VERY poor choice
for an autotools project. |
Yep, whatever you do, don't even consider kdevelop for autotools based projects... |
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mikegpitt
Advocate
Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 3224
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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| ssuominen wrote: | | VoidMage wrote: | As I (and other people) repeatedly stated kdevelop is a VERY poor choice
for an autotools project. |
Yep, whatever you do, don't even consider kdevelop for autotools based projects... |
I've personally not used kdevelop for a significant project before. Why is it a bad choice? Just curious... |
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SamuliSuominen
Retired Dev
Joined: 30 Sep 2005
Posts: 2133
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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| mikegpitt wrote: | | ssuominen wrote: | | VoidMage wrote: | As I (and other people) repeatedly stated kdevelop is a VERY poor choice
for an autotools project. |
Yep, whatever you do, don't even consider kdevelop for autotools based projects... |
I've personally not used kdevelop for a significant project before. Why is it a bad choice? Just curious... |
Well, for one, KDevelop-4 betas don't have autotools support yet, only cmake.
And KDevelop-3 generates invalid autotools build-system, incompatible with autoconf-2.64 and above, so it won't even work... at least in a future-proof way. |
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mv
Watchman
Joined: 20 Apr 2005
Posts: 6747
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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I think the above mentioned autotools mythbuster is extremely good. For a project which should go to gentoo you should in particular observe the warning in Section 3.1. The only criticism which I have there are code snippets like | Code: | | AS_IF([test "x$enable_bar" = "xyes"], ... |
which should cleaner be | Code: | | AS_VAR_IF([enable_bar], [yes], [...] |
but this might require a rather current autoconf version. Anyway, I would recommend to use the newest automake/autconf because their info-files are meanwhile also rather good; and in case you use code from somewhere else you should make sure to check that its macros are not listed in the obsolete section of the newest versions... |
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