Getting started with autotools

Question

Anyone recommend how a person could get started with autotools in building a C project?

Answer 1

I found this tutorial given by Thomas Petazzoni at the Embedded Linux Conference 2016 very helpful to start learning autotools: Autotools: A Demystification Tutorial

Here are the associated slides: GNU Autotools Tutorial Slides

He gives demonstrations and good examples that are in my opinion a good start before going further with the already mentioned A. Duret-Lutz tutorial.

Answer 2

Follow the autotools tutorial.

You can also get the autobook. Chapter 4 covers a minimal GNU autotools project.

Answer 3

This is a good place to start:

http://www.dwheeler.com/autotools/ - video tutorial: Introduction to the Autotools (2012-03-05)

He makes a very good point "Beware any documentation written before 2006 is probably out of date."

After that:

http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~adl/autotools.html - autotools tutorial (556 slides) http://www.openismus.com/documents/linux/automake/automake - Using Automake and Autoconf with C++

Answer 4

I would recommend this tutorial and get the book when it's released. The tutorial really helped me a lot, it even contains a step by step conversion of an existing (non trivial) project to autotools.

Answer 5

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 addresses the concerns raised by Peter Miller in his Recursive Make Considered Harmful article.

EDIT: for reference, there is also Autotools Tutorial for Beginners.