Re: Automake a case study

[Roger Leigh]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 12:24:59AM -0600, Calvin Arndt wrote:
> Project/Makefile.am
> 
> SUBDIRS = project
> docsdir = $(datadir)/project/docs
                       ^^^^^^^ use $(PACKAGE), it's more flexible
> docs_DATA = project/docs/*

In older releases of automake, you would have to write a dist-hook rule to
distribute docs_DATA.

That's not good.  It will break if you use CVS, or have any generated
files in there.  Why not add `docs' to SUBDIRS, and have a dedicated
Makefile.am in there to build/install/distribute the docs?

You can use something like:
man_MANS = [manpages]
htmldir = $(datadir)/$(PACKAGE)/doc/html
html_DATA = [html files]
textdir = $(datadir)/$(PACKAGE)/doc
text_DATA = [text files]
EXTRA_DIST = $(man_MANS) $(html_DATA) $(text_DATA)

> I put those .am's together myself! BUT it took me two months. Redhat
> did a great job writing that book but it's absolutely worthless. The
> book spends more than half of its breath talking about libtool
> libraries and 2/3 of whats left on autoconf and only
> lightly touches on automake. The examples for automake are poor.

Have you tried looking at existing projects as examples?  There are
literally thouands to choose from.  Books are useful, but getting
experience by looking at what other have done, and why, will teach you
more.  Experiment with it and see what it can do, and (possibly) find the
limitations.

> Linux is not just the reallm of college "CS" majors anymore!

Was it ever?  I'm a biologist (and free software programmer in my spare
time)

-- 
Roger Leigh
                ** Registration Number: 151826, http://counter.li.org **
                Need Epson Stylus Utilities? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
                GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 available on public keyservers