When compiling a project that comes with bash configure scripts such as: autogen.sh, makefile.am, configure.ac, configure.in etc. Where does compiling takes place, if you invoke these commands:
autogen.sh
autoconf configure.ac
...
...
./configure
make
make install
Does the compiling happens before the "make install"? or at "make install". I am only interested
in compiling the library so that my code can compile rather than to actually install the software.
Usually, configure prepares the Makefiles, make compiles everything and make install copies the binaries into the appropriate folders on your system.
Related
I want to build my own operating system ， but how install i686-elf-gcc in manjaro
i I found a tool（https://github.com/lordmilko/i686-elf-tools）, but it can only be run in ubuntu
A simple solution would be to build the compiler yourself. I went through the same thing recently. If you are into operating system development, you won't be able to avoid looking at the compiler in more detail and building cross compilation tools anyway.
Building your own compiler
The build process can be roughly divided into 4 steps:
Install all dependencies necessary for the build. If I remember correctly, you can get everything from the official package sources in Arch Linux. Make sure that these packages/tools are present: make, bison, flex, gmp, mpc, mpfr, texinfo, libisoburn, mtools.
Download the source code of binutils (GNU's assembler and binary tools) and gcc (the GNU compiler collection). I recommend using the newest versions at the bottom of the respective pages.
Decide where your new compiler should be installed. Although it sounds tempting, it should not end up in any system directory, rather somewhere in your home folder. I used $HOME/tools/crc to store my cross-compilation tools. You can at it to your $PATH lateron for convenience.
Do the actual build. First of all: The build takes a while and needs one or the other command line switch. Do not omit any of them. The build may pass and problems may occur later. Just follow the instructions below.
The actual build process
The first thing to do is to compile binutils, because it is needed for the gcc build. For convenience set a few shell variables to minimize error sources:
# This is where the tools will end up
export PREFIX="$HOME/tools/crc"
# Prefix of the produced assemblies (for example i686-elf-gcc)
export TARGET=i686-elf
# Add the new installation to the PATH variable temporarily
# since it is required for the gcc build
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"
Now create a new directory somewhere and extract both the gcc and binutils source code archives in there. You should end up with two subdirectories like yourdir/binutils-x.y.z and yourdir/gcc-x.y.z. It is recommended to do the build in an empty directory, so create yourdir/build-binutils and yourdir/build-gcc as well. Notice: These directories are not placed inside the source directories!
Building binutils
cd into the yourdir/build-binutils directory and run the following commands. Replace the x.y.z part with your version.
../binutils-x.y.z/configure \
--target=$TARGET \
--prefix="$PREFIX" \
--with-sysroot \
--disable-nls \
--disable-werror
make
make install
Now check the installation with which -- $TARGET-as. This will return the location of i686-elf-as, which is the assembler we just build.
Building gcc
cd into the yourdir/build-gcc directory. The process is pretty much the same as with binutils above:
../gcc-x.y.z/configure \
--target=$TARGET \
--prefix="$PREFIX" \
--disable-nls \
--enable-languages=c,c++ \
--without-headers
make all-gcc
make all-target-libgcc
make install-gcc
make install-target-libgcc
Verify the build
Check the installation by invoking i686-elf-gcc --version. If you used the same values as I, this can be done with $HOME/tools/crc/bin/$TARGET-gcc --version.
I try to use the c++ language bindings for the ev3dev lego brick: https://github.com/ddemidov/ev3dev-lang-cpp
The instruction is as follows:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DEV3DEV_PLATFORM=EV3
make
I am running windows and have cmake and mingw available. After running cmake it creates some files in the build directory. However: There is no makefile which could be picked of by make. So I am wondering how iam supposed to compile these bindings
On Windows, CMake generates a MSVC solution by default. Check for a .sln file in your build directory.
The instructions you linked are assuming a Unix-ish platform, where the default is to create Makefiles.
If you actually want Makefiles on Windows, add -G "Unix Makefiles" to the cmake line.
If you want to use MSVC as compiler but work on the command line, another option is -G "NMake Makefiles", and calling nmake after that.
Make sure to delete your build directory before trying to build a new generator target. CMake can be touchy about that.
Check cmake --help for a list of available options. (Especially the generator targets are platform-specific.)
1. cmake is a command from CMake software: preparation for build automation system; make and make install are commands from Make software: build automation system.
2. From reading this post, what I understand is that:
a. This "cmake and make" stuffs actually use g++ / gcc in its implementation. cmake and make stuffs are basically just tools in using g++ / gcc. Is that correct?
b. gcc / g++ are the compiler that do the actual work.
c. So I can just use gcc / g++ directly without using the make and CMake things?
3. According to this stackoverflow answer: CMake takes a CMakeList.txt file, and outputs it to a platform-specific build format, e.g., a Makefile, Visual Studio, etc.
However when I came across this openCV installation :
mkdir release
cd release
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ..
It executes cmake command in a directory where there is no CMakeLists.txt file. Can you explain and elaborate on this?
4. The usual steps that I've seen are: cmake, make, sudo make install.
I read this stackoverflow post, what I understand:
(i) make is for building the project.
(ii) make install is to copy the binary / executables to the installed directories.
a. So when we make, where are the result / binary files / executables stored at?
b. If we only run make without make install, does it mean that the files are not generated?
c. I came across this openCV tutorial on using openCV with GCC and CMake. It uses:
cd <DisplayImage_directory>
cmake .
make
Why doesn't it do make install as well?
5. In summary:
CMake takes CMakeList.txt file (which is cross platform) to generate a Makefile (which is specific to a platform).
I can just write Makefile manually and skip the CMake step. but it is better to do with the CMake step because it is cross platform, otherwise I have to rewrite the Makefile again if I change platform.
Make takes Makefile (which is generated by CMake or written manually) as a guide to compile and build. Make basically uses gcc / g++ or other compiler in its work. Make itself is just a tool for the compiler.
Make install put the result / executables into the install path
CMake generates files for other build systems. These can be Makefiles, Ninja files or projects files for IDEs like Visual Studio or Eclipse. The build files contain calls to compilers like GCC, Clang, or cl.exe. If you have several compilers installed, you can choose one.
All three parts are independent. The compiler, the build system and CMake.
It is easier to understand when you have the history. People used their compiler. Over time they added so many flags, that it was cumbersome to type them every time. So they put the calls in a script. From that the build systems (Make, Ninja) evolved.
The people wanted to support multiple platforms, compilers, scenarios and so on and the build system files became hard to maintain and their use was error-prone. That's the reason people invented meta build system that creates the files for the actual build system. Examples are Autotools or CMake.
Yes
CMake does not use your compiler, make does not implement it, but it calls (uses) the compiler.
The CMakeLists.txt file should be in the parent directory of release. The last argument of the CMake call indicates the path where the CMakeLists.txt file is located.
Right, make generates the file in the build directory. In your example from 3. release is the build directory. You can find all the generated files and use them. Installing is optional, especially if you want to develop the software, you are not installing it.
Try writing Makefiles for a large project and you will see how much work it is. But yes, everything in 5 is right.
I am installing glfw forcodeblocks, when I try to execute the makefile through command prompt in order to compil glfw using this command:mingw32-make win32-mingw I get the following error mingw32 make: ***no rule to make target 'win32'. stop.
I am running a 64 bit version of windows 8
Edit:
For newer versions of glfw you can not use compile.bat or command mingw32-make win32-mingw
You must use CMake to create makefiles under the source folder e.g. build folder.
Then you can run mingw32-make .
For older versions :
Try it with the command described on the glfw side.
Unzip the archive anywhere you like (I will assume C:\glfw for simplicity).
Compile:
For Windows users, there is a batch file which allows to compile using a variety of compilers.
Open a DOS window, cd to the directory where GLFW lives (e.g. C:\glfw), and type
compile make mgw
Building the Libraries
As you can see there is a compile.bat
Of course you have to cd to your source folder. From an folder outside the source a compile.bat will not work.
if in your source there is no compile download it here.
glfw-2.5.zip
These two files are mostly seen in open source projects.
What are they for, and how do they work?
Makefile.am is a programmer-defined file and is used by automake to generate the Makefile.in file (the .am stands for automake).
The configure script typically seen in source tarballs will use the Makefile.in to generate a Makefile.
The configure script itself is generated from a programmer-defined file named either configure.ac or configure.in (deprecated). I prefer .ac (for autoconf) since it differentiates it from the generated Makefile.in files and that way I can have rules such as make dist-clean which runs rm -f *.in. Since it is a generated file, it is not typically stored in a revision system such as Git, SVN, Mercurial or CVS, rather the .ac file would be.
Read more on GNU Autotools.
Read about make and Makefile first, then learn about automake, autoconf, libtool, etc.
Simple example
Shamelessly adapted from: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Creating-amhello.html and tested on Ubuntu 14.04 Automake 1.14.1.
Makefile.am
SUBDIRS = src
dist_doc_DATA = README.md
README.md
Some doc.
configure.ac
AC_INIT([automake_hello_world], [1.0], [bug-automake#gnu.org])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([-Wall -Werror foreign])
AC_PROG_CC
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h])
AC_CONFIG_FILES([
Makefile
src/Makefile
])
AC_OUTPUT
src/Makefile.am
bin_PROGRAMS = autotools_hello_world
autotools_hello_world_SOURCES = main.c
src/main.c
#include <config.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main (void) {
puts ("Hello world from " PACKAGE_STRING);
return 0;
}
Usage
autoreconf --install
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
sudo make install
autotools_hello_world
sudo make uninstall
This outputs:
Hello world from automake_hello_world 1.0
Notes
autoreconf --install generates several template files which should be tracked by Git, including Makefile.in. It only needs to be run the first time.
make install installs:
the binary to /usr/local/bin
README.md to /usr/local/share/doc/automake_hello_world
On GitHub for you to try it out.
DEVELOPER runs autoconf and automake:
autoconf -- creates shippable configure script
(which the installer will later run to make the Makefile)
‘autoconf’ is a macro processor.
It converts configure.ac, which is a shell script using macro instructions, into configure, a full-fledged shell script.
automake - creates shippable Makefile.in data file
(which configure will later read to make the Makefile)
Automake helps with creating portable and GNU-standard compliant Makefiles.
‘automake’ creates complex Makefile.ins from simple Makefile.ams
INSTALLER runs configure, make and sudo make install:
./configure # Creates Makefile (from Makefile.in).
make # Creates the application (from the Makefile just created).
sudo make install # Installs the application
# Often, by default its files are installed into /usr/local
INPUT/OUTPUT MAP
Notation below is roughly: inputs --> programs --> outputs
DEVELOPER runs these:
configure.ac -> autoconf -> configure (script) --- (*.ac = autoconf)
configure.in --> autoconf -> configure (script) --- (configure.in depreciated. Use configure.ac)
Makefile.am -> automake -> Makefile.in ----------- (*.am = automake)
INSTALLER runs these:
Makefile.in -> configure -> Makefile (*.in = input file)
Makefile -> make ----------> (puts new software in your downloads or temporary directory)
Makefile -> make install -> (puts new software in system directories)
"autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell scripts to automatically configure software source code packages. These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4 macro calls."
"automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Automake requires the use of Autoconf."
Manuals:
GNU AutoTools (The definitive manual on this stuff)
m4 (used by autoconf)
autoconf
automake
Free online tutorials:
Using GNU Autotools
Example:
The main configure.ac used to build LibreOffice is over 12k lines of code, (but there are also 57 other configure.ac files in subfolders.)
From this my generated configure is over 41k lines of code.
And while the Makefile.in and Makefile are both only 493 lines of code. (But, there are also 768 more Makefile.in's in subfolders.)
reference :
Makefile.am -- a user input file to automake
configure.in -- a user input file to autoconf
autoconf generates configure from configure.in
automake gererates Makefile.in from Makefile.am
configure generates Makefile from Makefile.in
For ex:
$]
configure.in Makefile.in
$] sudo autoconf
configure configure.in Makefile.in ...
$] sudo ./configure
Makefile Makefile.in