learning autotools (was: Re: build problem on fclose)

[John W. Eaton]

On 28-Jul-2011, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

| John, how does one learn autotools nowadays? The autobook hasn't been
| updated forever, so I don't want to learn from an outdated resource.
| I've realised that it's impossible to use a different build system at
| least because we're using gnulib which needs autotools to function,
| and probably for other reasons too. What's the thing to read? I get
| lost with m4 and autoconf, automake, and I get confused with which
| files are automatically generated and which aren't, and I don't even
| know what things to check for, what cross-platform issues to watch out
| for, what files to touch if I want to mess with the build system
| (which I sort of want to do right now, because I want to push Jacob's
| GUI work into Savannah so we can all start building it regularly).
| 
| So can you recommend something to read? RTFM is fine, but which FMs
| should be read?

When I modified Octave's build system to use automake, libtool, and
gnulib, I think I  just read the manuals for each of those packages.

Since we are using automake, that's the most important one, followed
by libtool.  You probably don't need to know much about gnulib unless
you are actually trying to use a new gnulib module in Octave.

If these manuals along with the Octave sources don't help, then feel
free to ask specific questions here.

jwe