Some questions about Autotools in Emacs

Some questions about Autotools in Emacs

[Xue Fuqiao]

Hi,

I'm an Autotools newbie and just started to study the build system in
Emacs.  I have two questions about them now:

1) In configure.ac, I found a
   "AC_CONFIG_HEADER(src/config.h:src/config.in)".  I can only find the
   macro `AC_CONFIG_HEADERS' in the Autoconf (2.69) manual.  Why?
   What's the differences of the two macros?

2) I only found a Makefile.am in the lib/ directory.  Does Emacs use
   Automake?  If so, how?

BTW the macro AC_INIT accepts five arguments (PACKAGE, VERSION,
[BUG-REPORT], [TARNAME], [URL]), but only the two required arguments are
specified in confugure.ac.  Does it make sense to add the rest
arguments?  TIA

Re: Some questions about Autotools in Emacs

[Andreas Schwab]

Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com> writes:

> 1) In configure.ac, I found a
>    "AC_CONFIG_HEADER(src/config.h:src/config.in)".  I can only find the
>    macro `AC_CONFIG_HEADERS' in the Autoconf (2.69) manual.  Why?
>    What's the differences of the two macros?

AC_CONFIG_HEADER is an obsolete macro, identical to AC_CONFIG_HEADERS
without the optional arguments.  I have replaced it now.

> 2) I only found a Makefile.am in the lib/ directory.  Does Emacs use
>    Automake?  If so, how?

lib/ is imported from gnulib, which uses automake.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Some questions about Autotools in Emacs

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Andreas Schwab writes:

 > AC_CONFIG_HEADER is an obsolete macro, identical to AC_CONFIG_HEADERS
 > without the optional arguments.  I have replaced it now.

That seems to be a bug in the manual.  Even though both the spelling
and argument changes are trivial in a sense, AC_CONFIG_HEADER ought to
be in the "Obsolete Macros" node.

@Fuqiao: On the off chance you missed the "Obsolete Constructs" node
in the Autoconf Info file, that's where the documentation of
AC_CONFIG_HEADER *should* be (but AFAICT it isn't, if that's any
consolation).

Re: Some questions about Autotools in Emacs

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
> Xue Fuqiao <xfq.free@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 1) In configure.ac, I found a
>>    "AC_CONFIG_HEADER(src/config.h:src/config.in)".  I can only find the
>>    macro `AC_CONFIG_HEADERS' in the Autoconf (2.69) manual.  Why?
>>    What's the differences of the two macros?
>
> AC_CONFIG_HEADER is an obsolete macro, identical to AC_CONFIG_HEADERS
> without the optional arguments.  I have replaced it now.
>
>> 2) I only found a Makefile.am in the lib/ directory.  Does Emacs use
>>    Automake?  If so, how?
>
> lib/ is imported from gnulib, which uses automake.

I see.  Thank you.  So, Emacs itself only uses Autoconf, but not
Automake/Libtool, right?

-- 
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/