Should configure check for programs used to install files (such as unzip for example), or is that the job of the Makefile? The same applies for directory existence - should configure check that a user-defined directory actually exists (for example, to enable a certain feature of the program which needs to install files into a different location)? Both of these are install-time checks, but automake doesn't seem to have any capabilities to do this, only autoconf.
It's configures job to do system discovery tasks. If you need unzip for a customized install step, configure should discover it or be directed to it (e.g. via AC_ARG_VAR).
Enabling features is IMO better handled by AC_ARG_WITH or AC_ARG_ENABLE, because you can always create the directory as part of make install. But if you'd rather check for the existence of the directory, configure is the place to do it.
Related
I'm trying to compile a code to run in parallel on a supercomputer. I know that others have compiled this code to run on the same computer, but for some reason I am having trouble even when using the same methodology as them. For now I'm just trying to compile the code to run in serial as that should be easier to troubleshoot.
configure seems to work correctly.
However make install returns the following:
> make install
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd .. && /bin/sh /home1/username123/code123/config/missing aclocal-1.13 -I ./config -I /home1/username123/code123/build-tools/aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal
aclocal-1.13: error: couldn't open directory '/usr/local/share/aclocal': No such file or directory
Makefile:534: recipe for target '../aclocal.m4' failed
make: *** [../aclocal.m4] Error 1
aclocal is indeed not located at /usr/local/share/aclocal, it is located at /usr/bin/aclocal - but as /usr/bin is in my path, I don't understand why the location is an issue.
As has been made clear in comments on the question, the problem was that the project sources were copied onto the target system in a way that failed to preserve their original timestamps. The Autotools, through make, use file timestamps to determine which files are out of date, and in particular, Autools-generated Makefiles contain rules for rebuilding the build system itself that can be triggered this way.
It is not ordinarily necessary or desirable to rebuild an Autotools project's build system, except in conjunction with actually performing maintenance on it. It is often the case, in fact, that the necessary support for that is not available locally. To avoid the build system thinking that it needs to rebuild itself, it is important to preserve the file timestamps from the distribution archive. For some packages, it also works to pass the --disable-maintainer-mode argument to the configure script, but by no means do all Autotools configure scripts support that.
The archive extraction tools for the typical archive formats in which Autotools-based packages are distributed do, by default, preserve timestamps when unpacking, so the ordinary procedure of
unpack the archive on the target system (e.g. tar xzf foo-1.2.3.tar.gz)
change to the unpacked source directory (e.g. cd foo-1.2.3)
configure; make; make install
normally does the right thing. Substituting something else for (1), however, such as copying the unpacked source tree from somewhere else, may cause the package to think it needs to rebuild the build system. If that works correctly then it's no big deal, but it is not uncommon that it doesn't. That's what happened here, and following the standard procedure described above solved the problem.
I am trying to build a library with a different build system, but files in the library require a config.h header file that is generated after running the configure scripts generated by autoconf.
This is the sequence of steps I am following to try and generate the config.h file that is needed
autoreconf -ivf
./configure --disable-dependency-tracking
The build system guarantees that the library gflags will be linked and the headers will be available at preprocessing time. But the configure script exits with the following error
configure: error: Please install google-gflags library
Is there some way I can get the list of required libraries (such as gflags) and then pass arguments to the configure script that tells it to assume that this library exists on the system? I went through the help output for both autoreconf and ./configure and wasn't able to figure this out.
Sorry for the long explanation and problem. I am very new to autoconf, etc.
The answer to your question is: no, it is not possible to get a list of dependencies from autotools.
Why?
Well, autotools doesn't track dependencies at all.
Instead, it checks whether specific features are present on the system (e.g. a given header-file; or a given library file).
Now a specific header file can come from a variety of sources, e.g. depending on your distribution the foo.h header can be installed via
libfoo-dev (Debian and derivatives)
foo-devel (Fedora)
foo (upstream)
...
In your specific case, the maintainers of your project output a nice error message telling you to install a given package by name.
The maintainers of your project also chose to abort with a fatal error if a given dependency is not available.
The reason might well be, that the project simply won't work without that dependency, and that is impossible to compile the program without it.
Example
Your project might be written in C++ and thus require a C++-compiler.
Obviously there is little use in passing some flags to ./configure so it assumes that there is a C++-compiler available if in reality there is none.
There is hope
However, not all is bad.
Your configure script might will have the ability to disable certain features (that appear to be hard requirements by default).
Just check ./configure --help and look for flags like
--enable-FOO
--disable-FOO
--with-BAR
--without-BAR
automation?
One thing to know about autotools, is that configure really is a program (the source-code being configure.ac) written in some arcane programming language (involving bash and m4),
This means that it can practically have any behavior, and there is no single standard way to achieve "dependecy tracking".
What you're trying to do will not work as umläute already said. On the other hand, depending on the package you're trying to build, you may be able to tell ./configure that a given library is there even if it isn't.
For instance if the script uses pkg-config to check for the presence of a library, you can use FOO_CFLAGS and FOO_LIBS to override the presence checking and telling it "yes those packages are there, you just don't know how to find them", but these are very package-specific so you may have to provide more information if that's what you're looking for.
Im trying to establish if it possible to create a deb package for the following app:
http://openfoam.org/download/4-0-source/
It uses an Allmake shell script which contains various standard shell commands and wmake commands to compile the source. wmake appears to be specific to this application but does call make:
http://www.cfdsupport.com/OpenFOAM-Training-by-CFD-Support/node25.html
https://github.com/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.1.x/blob/master/wmake/wmake
Is it possible to call the shell script from within a debian/rules file? or is there a better way of doing this if it is indeed possible?
Any assistance is much appreciated.
Indeed, the general idea of the debian/rules file is to run whatever commands are required to configure and install the upstream package into a location suitable for the dpkg toolchain.
Modern debhelper-based debian/rules files are typically extremely terse, because most typical packages adhere to build conventions for which good, very simple canned helpers are available, but traditional, more complex and explicit rules files are well-documented in older Debian packaging documentation.
Basically, the debian/rules file is a Makefile; it should have a binary target with the commands to build the upstream package into the Debian package root.
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/dreq.en.html#rules is probably useful as a starting point - unless your needs are really arcane, the dh defaults will mostly make sense, and it allows you to easily override the parts which don't.
I am making a configure.ac file for a tool i made and i need to check whether pdflatex is installed in the users system. How do i do it ? For checking for other libraries i simply included the test programs using AC_COMPILE_IFELSE, but i dont know if pdflatex can be invoked from the program.
Also is it regular practise to install all the required packages automatically using some script or i can just specify in the readme file which packages are required and then its upto user to install those packages.
You can use AC_CHECK_PROG([have_pdflatex], [pdflatex], [yes], [no]) to simply check if it exists and set have_pdflatex to yes if so. It's more likely that you'll want to use AC_PATH_PROG([PDFLATEX], [pdflatex]) to find the actual path of the program if it exists and store it in PDFLATEX.
I think it's best to let the user install the prerequisites themself. You don't know how they install their software (apt? yum? pacman? emerge? source?) and it wouldn't be worth the effort to try to cover all cases. It's sufficient to just mention them in the README and to test for them with Autoconf macros.
I would like to use a headless OpenOffice instance (to interface it with PHP) on my webhost's server. Of course I can't install stuff there with the usual package mechanism, since I am just an ordinary user. However, I would be allowed to run (more or less) whatever I want, and I have ssh access.
Is there a way to install LibreOffice/OpenOffice in some directory under my home directory, and also get all dependencies there? It would be advantageous if I didn't have to run the actual build on the webhost, since it would clog the server... But maybe I could manage to build it on some other FreeBSD host... I would want the build to be as static as possible, i.e. with as few outside dependencies as possible.
Can this be done?
For the record, the webhost is running FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p3 on amd64.
Hmm, you may try to install ports-mgmt/pbi-manager port (it's basically a bunch of shellscripts) and use pbi_add command to install libreoffice PBI.
PBI packages contain all necessary dependencies and, AFAIK, can be installed without root permissions.