[news.eclipse.technology.linuxtools] Re: Using autoheader and libtoolize

[Lorenzo Bettini <bettini@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Johnston wrote:
> Lorenzo Bettini wrote:
>
> > Jeff Johnston wrote:
> > > Matthias Jeschke wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi,
> > >
> > > > I'am currently working on a project that uses autotools and as I'am 
> > > > used to eclipse I want import this project as a C++ autotools 
> > > > project. Everything works fine, except that for building the project 
> > > > autoheader and libtoolize must be called to create the appropriate 
> > > > config.h.in etc.
> > >
> > > > What would be the best way to call autoheader and libtoolize from 
> > > > within eclipse? Is there a way to add these calls to autogen.sh?
> > >
> > > Matthias,
> > >
> > > The current Autotools plugin doesn't currently support direct calling 
> > > of autoheader and libtoolize as it does for autoconf, automake, and 
> > > aclocal, but as you have correctly guessed, you can place these calls 
> > > into an autogen.sh script which is run as part of the Autotools 
> > > configuration step.  Autotools expects that autogen.sh is only run 
> > > once and that configure will be created as part of the autogen.sh 
> > > invocation so it does not run autogen.sh if configure already exists 
> > > in the build directory.
> > >
> > > Feel free to open RFEs to add UI support to Autotools for calling 
> > > autoheader and libtoolize if you want to track the addition of those 
> > > features.
>
> > Hi
>
> > why does it use (and expect) autogen.sh, instead of relying on 
> > autoreconf?
>
> > cheers
> >     Lorenzo
>
> It does not "expect" autogen.sh, it simply looks for it as some projects 
> choose to not ship generated files and use autogen.sh to set the project 
> up initially.  autoreconf is only useful after you have done an initial 
> generation because it only remakes those files that are older than their 
> sources and it wouldn't know what options to use unless the file had at 
> least been generated once.

Mh, well that's not exactly true: you can bootstrap an autotools project 
by issuing

autoreconf -i

(with -s missing files will soft linked), and the automake manual says:

"Many packages come with a script called bootstrap.sh or autogen.sh, 
that will just call aclocal, libtoolize, gettextize or autopoint, 
autoconf, autoheader, and automake in the right order. Actually this is 
precisely what autoreconf can do for you. If your package has such a 
bootstrap.sh or autogen.sh script, consider using autoreconf. That 
should simplify its logic a lot (less things to maintain, yum!), it's 
even likely you will not need the script anymore, and more to the point 
you will not call aclocal directly anymore. "

just my two cents :-)

--
Lorenzo Bettini, PhD in Computer Science, DI, Univ. Torino
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