Re: how to develop new target-specific library - autoconf?

[Phil Edwards <pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com>]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 02:10:10PM -0700, Gary Funck wrote:
> My question: in general, does a GCC developer need to manually invoke
> autoconf, when developing a new target-specific library? Or, is there a step
> missing in some other config file, or Makefile that would've built
> "configure" automatically in the top-level library directory?

Yes.  :-)

Yes to both, that is.  [Re-]generating configure and other outputs from
autoconf (and automake, et al, should you choose to use them) is one
of the maintainence steps that a maintainer needs to do when changing
the input file(s), e.g., configure.in.  Whenevre I change configure.in,
I must regen configure, and then check both updated files into the tree.

Now, during development, while I'm still playing with configure.in, there is
an automake option called 'maintainer mode' which will automatically call
autoconf (and aclocal, automake, and so forth) as needed, when it detects
that the timestamp of an input file has become newer than the timestamp
of its output file.  (It just adds some rules to the generated makefile,
is all.)  However, this requires that you use automake in your library,
and that you remember to pass --enable-maintainer-mode when configuring.

(You still need to make sure all the output files are regenerated before
checking in changes, but maint. mode will save you some typing.)


Phil

-- 
Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in
new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance
which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.
                                     - anonymous Egyptian scribe, c.1700 BC