What is autoconf in Linux?

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.

How does autoconf work?

Autoconf essentially runs the preprocessor on your script to produce a portable shell script which will perform all the requisite tests, produce handy log files, preprocess template files, for example to generate Makefile from Makefile.in and and take a standard set of command line arguments.

How do you write autoconf?

To create a configure script with Autoconf, you need to write an Autoconf input file configure.ac (or configure.in ) and run autoconf on it. If you write your own feature tests to supplement those that come with Autoconf, you might also write files called aclocal.

What is Autotools project?

Autotools at work For developers, Autotools is a quick and easy way to manage and package source code so users can compile and install software. Autotools is also well-supported by major packaging formats, like DEB and RPM, so maintainers of software repositories can easily prepare a project built with Autotools.

What is Aclocal M4?

So, aclocal. m4 is for local macros that are not necessarily part of regular Autoconf but which are used by your specific software.

What is automake used for?

In software development, GNU Automake is a programming tool to automate parts of the compilation process. It eases usual compilation problems. For example, it points to needed dependencies. It automatically generates one or more Makefile.in from files called Makefile.am.

What is autoconf in Ubuntu?

Autoconf is a GPLv2-licensed package of macros that produces a shell script “configure” to generate a Makefile and config header for a project. The configuration scripts produced by Autoconf are self-contained, so the users of your project do not need Autoconf, M4, or perl to run configure. 1.

What configure make?

./configure runs a script named “configure” in the current directory. make runs the program “make” in your path, and make install runs it again with the argument “install”. Generally, the “configure” script was generated by a collection of programs known as “autotools”.

What is GNU Autotools toolchain?

The GNU Autotools, also known as the GNU Build System, is a suite of programming tools designed to assist in making source code packages portable to many Unix-like systems. Autotools is part of the GNU toolchain and is widely used in many free software and open source packages.

What is configure AC?

configure.ac (sometimes also named: configure.in) is an input file for autoconf. It contains tests that check for conditions that are likely to differ on different platforms. The tests are made by actually invoke autoconf macros.

What is Aclocal Ubuntu?

aclocal command in Linux is used to automatically generate aclocal. m4 files from configure.in file. automake in Linux contain a lot of autoconf macros that can be used in the different packages. These macros must be defined in the aclocal. If not, then it can’t be accessed by the autoconf.