"Steven T. Hatton" <hattons@globalsymmetry.com> [29 Feb 2004 01:17:29]:
Then there's the issue of config.h.
What's the issue here? config.h is created automatically by running configure.
I'm not sure where autogen and pkg-config fit into this picture.
I've never had to deal with autogen, so I can't say anything about it. pkg-config comes from the gnome project and allows you to get configuration data about installed programs, like needed libraries or compiler flags. pkg-config is often used in configure scripts to check for availability of a given library/package and to add its linker and compiler options to the makefile(s).
also libtool and libtoolize
Libtools is used to ease the creation of shared libraries across different Unix flavors. libtoolize is the tool to add libtool to your project, just like gettextize adds gettext support.
as well as autoheader
Automatically creates config.h.in, the template that is then used by configure to create config.h.
autoscan, autoupdate, etc.
Simply read 'info autoconf' and search for these terms That should explain it.
Then there's Makefile.am verses Makefile.ac. Or is that configure.am verses configure.ac?
You're heavily mixing these up :) Makefile.am is the Makefile fragment you create. automake then turns this into a full-blown Makefile.in, which in turn is then used by configure to finally create Makefile by replacing place holders by their actual values as determined during the configure run. configure.in and configure.ac are actually two names for the same thing, the configure template you write and which gets turned into the configure script by running autoconf. configure.ac is the nowadays preferred name, as it makes clearer that this is a file meant for autoconf. Philipp