Working with the GNU build system

A Makefile is a good solution when you are always going to build and run your software on the same system, and things like glibc and gcc versions and the available library versions are known. However, most software need to be built and run in a variety of systems.

Getting ready

The GNU build system, or autotools, is a set of tools whose aim is to create a Makefile for your software in a variety of systems. It's made up of three main tools:

• autoconf: This parses the contents of a configure.ac file that describes the source code to be built and creates a configure script. This script will then be used to generate the final Makefile.

• automake: This parses the contents of a Makefile.am file and converts it into a Makefile.in file. This is then used by the configure script generated earlier to obtain a config.status script that gets automatically executed to obtain the final Makefile.

• libtools: This manages the creation of both static and dynamic libraries.

How to...