Re: Damien Lespiau » shave: making the auto tools output sane

[Adam Mercer]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 00:25, Vincent Torri<address@hidden> wrote:

> Is it possible to add AM_SILENT_RULES only when automake version is >= 1.11,
> that is is there a good way to retrieve the version of automake in
> configure.ac ? Something like:
>
> AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(1.6 dist-bzip2)
> if test $AUTOMAKE_CURRENT_VERSION -ge 1.1 ; then
>   AM_SILENT_RULES
> fi
>
> I think that i can get it by using sed on what is returned by 'automake
> -version', but i would prefer an "autotools" way

The best way I've found, from Ralf's recommendations, to use an
autotools feature only if it is available is to use the m4_ifdef
macro, for example, adding the following to my projects configure.ac
uses the silent build rules, from automake-1.11, if appropriate:

m4_ifdef([AM_SILENT_RULES],[AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])],)

this is not in production yet, just in the development git repo, so
YMMV but I have used this technique for other autoconf and automake
macros without issue.

Cheers

Adam