The instruction on the automake man page and the online manual at gnu.org don't work for me.
They say that a bare "automake" reads configure.am and writes configure. However, when I try it there's no error, but nothing is written to configure. I have to use
automake configure.am >configure
Is this a doc bug, or am I doing something wrong?
The title of the page you linked says: Using autoconf to Create configure and you are using automake...
Firstly, the file is called configure.ac, not configure.am.
Secondly, just run autoreconf to generate configure. Depending on the files present, it will call automake, autoconf, aclocal, etc. pp. in the correct sequence.
Related
A user of xnec2c was trying to build on OSX and had autoconf issues because PKG_CHECK_MODULES could not be found since MacPorts puts it in a funny spot.
The user made autoconf work like so:
ACLOCAL_PATH=/opt/local/share/aclocal ./autogen.sh
ACLOCAL_PATH=/opt/local/share/aclocal ./configure
I would like to make it build on OSX without special user path hacks for ACLOCAL_PATH. Can that be done?
I started writing a possible fix below and realized it could an xyproblem so posed the question just above. However, if this starts any gears turning, then I would be open to a bit of special-casing for OSX:
For example, would it be possible (if not advisable) to detect:
Is PKG_CHECK_MODULES missing?
If so:
is it OSX?
Is [ -d /opt/local/share/aclocal ] true?
Does the macro exist there?
While aclocal has a few ways of appending to its search path (see https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Macro-Search-Path.html), you cannot modify that macro search path using code in configure.ac:
When the shell code in configure is run, it is too late, as the available macros have already been expanded. When autoconf (is it autoconf or something else? anyway, m4 called from autoreconf) generates configure from configure.ac by having m4 expand the macros it is also too late: aclocal has already collected the m4 macros it could find.
So what you would need is a step before the autoreconf run - which is beyond what I would consider a buildsystem needs to do.
What you can do: Put static strings into the top level Makefile.am file like e.g.
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I auto-m4 -I project-m4 -I /opt/local/share/aclocal
(this example uses auto-m4/ with AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([auto-m4]) for the *.m4 files automatically put there by autoreconf/autopoint/libtoolize and project-m4/ for the project specific *.m4 files).
Of course, you should already have
m4_pattern_forbid([PKG_CHECK_MODULES])dnl
before invoking PKG_CHECK_MODULES for the first time so that the problem of the missing *.m4 file will be detected at the earliest possible time, i.e. when autoconf is about to generate a configure file with PKG_CHECK_MODULES unexpanded.
You could use some m4 code to print a lengthy error message if PKG_CHECK_MODULES is not defined. Something along the lines of (untested)
m4_ifndef([PKG_CHECK_MODULES], [dnl
m4_fatal([Could not find the PKG_CHECK_MODULES macro. Check that the pkg.m4 file is available and aclocal finds it (e.g. set ACLOCAL_PATH=/opt/local/share/aclocal).
])dnl
PKG_CHECK_MODULES([FOO], [foo])
Personally, I would go with m4_pattern_forbid and make sure OSX builds with homebrew work OOTB, and then document idiosyncrasies for building on rare and buggy systems like OSX with macports or SunOS without GNU tools in the INSTALL file.
Isn't it a bug in macports/OSX that aclocal there cannot find its *.m4 files? Shouldn't there be a dirlist file pointing to /opt/local/share/aclocal? Or perhaps they macports users should have an aclocal in their PATH which actually finds the macports macro files?
In any case, I would not consider it my build systems's job to fix a buggy system. You need to draw the line somewhere.
I'm currently learning how to use the autoconf/automake toolchain. I seem to have a general understanding of the workflow here - basically you have a configure.ac script which generates an executable configure file. The generated configure script is then executed by the end user to generate Makefiles, so the program can be built/installed.
So the installation for a typical end-user is basically:
./configure
make
make install
make clean
Okay, now here's where I'm confused:
As a developer, I've noticed that the auto-generated configure script sometimes won't run, and will error with:
config.status: error: cannot find input file: `somedir/Makefile.in'
This confuses me, because I thought the configure script is supposed to generate the Makefile.in. So Googling around for some answers, I've discovered that this can be fixed with an autogen.sh script, which basically "resets" the state of the autoconf environment. A typical autogen.sh script would be something like:
aclocal \
&& automake --add-missing \
&& autoconf
Okay fine. But as an end-user who's downloaded countless tarballs throughout my life, I've never had to use an autogen.sh script. All I did was uncompress the tarball, and do the usual configure/make/make install/make clean routine.
But as a developer who's now using autoconf, it seems that configure doesn't actually run unless you run autogen.sh first. So I find this very confusing, because I thought the end-user shouldn't have to run autogen.sh.
So why do I have to run autogen.sh first - in order for the configure script to find Makefile.in? Why doesn't the configure script simply generate it?
In order to really understand the autotools utilities you have to remember where they come from: they come from an open source world where there are (a) developers who are working from a source code repository (CVS, Git, etc.) and creating a tar file or similar containing source code and putting that tar file up on a download site, and (b) end-users who are getting the source code tar file, compiling that source code on their system and using the resulting binary. Obviously the folks in group (a) also compile the code and use the resulting binary, but the folks in group (b) don't have or need, often, all the tools for development that the folks in group (a) need.
So the use of the tools is geared towards this split, where the people in group (b) don't have access to autoconf, automake, etc.
When using autoconf, people generally check in the configure.ac file (input to autoconf) into source control but do not check in the output of autoconf, the configure script (some projects do check in the configure script of course: it's up to you).
When using automake, people generally check in the Makefile.am file (input to automake) but do not check in the output of automake: Makefile.in.
The configure script basically looks at your system for various optional elements that the package may or may not need, where they can be found, etc. Once it finds this information, it can use it to convert various XXX.in files (typically, but not solely, Makefile.in) into XXX files (for example, Makefile).
So the steps generally go like this: write configure.ac and Makefile.am and check them in. To build the project from source code control checkout, run autoconf to generate configure from configure.ac. Run automake to generate Makefile.in from Makefile.am. Run configure to generate Makefile from Makefile.in. Run make to build the product.
When you want to release the source code (if you're developing an open source product that makes source code releases) you run autoconf and automake, then bundle up the source code with the configure and Makefile.in files, so that people building your source code release just need make and a compiler and don't need any autotools.
Because the order of running autoconf and automake (and libtool if you use it) can be tricky there are scripts like autogen.sh and autoreconf, etc. which are checked into source control to be used by developers building from source control, but these are not needed/used by people building from the source code release tar file etc.
Autoconf and automake are often used together but you can use autoconf without automake, if you want to write your own Makefile.in.
For this error:
config.status: error: cannot find input file: `somedir/Makefile.in'
In the directory where the configure.ac is located in the Makefile.am add a line with the subdirectory somedir
SUBDIRS = somedir
Inside somedir put a Makefile.am with all the description. then run automaker --add-missing
A better description can be found in 7.1 Recursing subdirectories automake manual.
https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html
I'm trying to build a package from source. The ./configure and make steps work out, but sudo make install or sudo checkinstall results in an error:
As we can see drbd is listed twice in the /usr/bin/install -c line.
The problem is I don't really know how to go about this. As expected, this list of files (ha resource agents) is not present in any of the Makefiles or install-sh, but generated somehow on the go.
Any ideas of where to look for or how to remove duplicate entry from this list? Thank you.
Actually I was mistaken and the above list was present in one of Makefile.am files. Here is the post that helped me out:
This issue is caused because for those earlier versions we incorrectly
had those specified files listed twice in the Makefile.am and with the
newer Automake versions this causes the errors you received.
p.s. Sorry, it was a haste to ask the question. Let this thread be for reference in that case.
I have 3 programs, two of which require an older version of autoconf one of which requires a newer version. right now all three programs are calling the newest autoconf version. I believe I have to modify the path to autoconf in the makefiles of the first two programs to resolve the issue, but it could very well be aclocal.m4 or configure.ac for that matter.
Which file in gnu-make calls autoconf? Where and in what syntax is the path defined?
Nothing in make should have to call autoconf, unless (in some cases) you edit configure.ac. You execute autoconf yourself (either directly, or indirectly from autoreconf) to generate the configure script from configure.ac.
Some programs also include a script called autogen.sh or bootstrap that calls autoconf. This should only be needed when checking the program out from source control.
Note that if you just want to compile the program and you don't edit configure.ac, you don't even need to have autoconf installed.
My advice is, if you need to edit configure.ac, then manually call the required version of autoconf after you edit it. Or consider upgrading configure.ac to use the latest version. I'm sure the author of the original program will thank you for it.
I'm new to NX OSes, actually MacOS, and when I try to build sources with make and makefiles, I never can.
I try to run make, even try to run it passing the makefile as an argument, but all I get is "There's nothing for make to do"
Can you point me to a tutorial, reference, or something ?
This one is excellent.
(You can also read some criticism to round your knowledge.)
(If after reading these, you want to try cmake, then you want to go here. It works perfectly on Mac OS X.)
Generally if you're trying to install from a tarball there will be a file named README or INSTALL with installation instructions. Usually all you have to do is run from the terminal
./configure
make
sudo make install
It's generally possible to set options for compilation by adding flags to ./configure, to see what they are run
./configure --help
Here is a tutorial to help you get started.
Just remember to use tabs instead of spaces when indenting lines in the makefile :)