autoconf problem on cygwin

[Charles Wilson]

Larry Hall wrote:

> Is this a question?  Is it rhetorical?  If not, I would say that 
> searching the email archives is always a good way to find out if others
> have seen a problem you're having.

I think what sps was saying was, how was he supposed to know that he 
needed to be using automake-1.4 in the first place.

The answer is, running the autotools is not a job for the faint of 
heart.  It is a maintainer task, not a "user" or "I download the source 
and want to run 'configure/make/make install'" task.  Maintainer tasks 
require somewhat more knowledge about the package under discussion -- 
like "what version of autoconf/automake/libtool is the 'approved' version".

Now, there are ways to find this information out, short of simply asking 
on that project's mailing list.  For instance:

(1) The configure script is generated by autoconf -- so download the 
"pristine" source tarball and look in the first few lines of the 
configure script.  You should see something like:
   "# Generated by GNU Autoconf 2.59 for cygutils 1.2.9."

Or, look in the configure.in/configure.ac script, It MIGHT say something 
like 'AC_PREREQ(2.59)'

(2) The Makefile.in files are generated by automake from Makefile.am. 
So, in the first few lines of the Makefile.in, you should see something like
   "# Makefile.in generated by automake 1.9.5 from Makefile.am."

(3) also, the aclocal.m4 file is usually created by aclocal from 
acinclude.m4 and various other .m4 scripts.  In the first few lines of 
aclocal.m4, you should see something like
   "# generated automatically by aclocal 1.9.5 -*- Autoconf -*-"

Both (2) and (3) should tell you that the version of automake used by 
the people who created the source tarball was 1.9.5 -- so you want 
'automake-1.9' to be the "active" version on your machine, if you're 
trying to re-run the upstream-approved versions of those tools for the 
package under discussion.

In sps's case, I bet the result of (2) or (3) would have said something 
about 'automake 1.4p6' and 'aclocal 1.4p6'...


Now, how to "make that happen" -- THAT's a question for this list. 
Either directly, or searching the archives.

You'd have found the following discussion about the packaging changes 
for cygwin's autotools, bringing them into line with the typical 
Linux-distribution structure:

"RFC: Changes to cygwin autotools packages"
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2005-05/msg00322.html

Searching the cygwin-announce list would find information about the new 
alternatives package:

"NEW: alternatives-1.3.20a-1"
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2005-06/msg00015.html

But you would NOT, unfortunately, find any mention of the actual release 
of the new autotool packages, because with all the new packages I 
released last month, I forgot to actually announce the new autotools. 
This is definitely my fault.  I'll correct that later this evening.

--
Chuck




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