Incredibly, somehow everyone else missed the canonical way to do this, which has been around since 2 years before this thread began. 🙂 I wondered the same thing as the OP and was disappointed by the lack of proper (non-ugly) ways to do this when I read this thread. A few days later, while idly … Read more
To make test run when you issue make check, you need to add them to the TESTS variable Assuming you’ve already built the executable that runs the unit tests, you just add the name of the executable to the TESTS variable like this: TESTS=my-test-executable It should then be automatically run when you make check, and … Read more
One significant problem with PKG_CHECK_MODULES is that it causes failures where it should not. If a user installs libfoo in /p/a/t/h and invokes a configure script with LDFLAGS=-L/p/a/t/h, the user is justified in expecting the configury to find libfoo. But, the user also must set PKG_CONFIG_PATH so that the configure script can find foo.pc in … Read more
In an autoconf/automake/libtool project you need to run: libtoolize: this copies/links a few support scripts, including ltmain.sh (which is the main component of libtool). aclocal: this looks up all m4 macros that your configure script will need, and make a local copy for easier access. autoheader: optional, if you want to use config.h/AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, otherwise all … Read more
I personally would really use the features of a source control software (you should use one) for this. This would cleanup make independent of your build process. See e.g. svn-cleanup or git clean. Nevertheless, automake allows some tweaking when to remove which files. This has (intentionally?) built-in limitations on what files generated by autotools can … Read more
I think that you’d be better off using the ExternalProject feature of cmake. I guess you have your project and have libantrl in a sub directory? project +- libantlr +- mysrc —- etc —- If that’s the case, you can do something like this in the top level CMakeLists.txt: cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8) project(test) include(ExternalProject) ExternalProject_Add(libantlr SOURCE_DIR … Read more
You typically need to use glibtool and glibtoolize, since libtool already exists on OS X as a binary tool for creating Mach-O dynamic libraries. So, that’s how MacPorts installs it, using a program name transform, though the port itself is still named ‘libtool’. Some autogen.sh scripts (or their equivalent) will honor the LIBTOOL / LIBTOOLIZE … Read more
Updated 16th of January 2019: Refined advice as tools evolve. I have used autotools before for a considerable amount of time. Currently I make intensive use of meson and cmake only when I need it. Some personal advice: for big teams, stick to CMake if you want to make use of the generators for XCode. … Read more
Alexandre Duret-Lutz’s tutorial is my resource of choice. There are also: Autotools: a practitioner’s guide to Autoconf, Automake and Libtool Autotools Mythbuster To me, the autobook is not up to date anymore and more difficult to read. However it still contains interesting chapters like Writing Portable Bourne Shell. Also, consider learning about non-recursive automake which … Read more
See Alexandre Duret Lutz’s Autotools tutorial, a must read. It contains diagrams explaining how the different files of an autotools project interact with each other and by which tool they are used: configure, config.h, config.status, aclocal.m4 etc EDIT: John Calcote also explains the purpose of aclocal and aclocal.m4 in the first chapter of his book … Read more