[Nexus-developers] Re: NXopenpath, autoconf

[Jens Krüger]

Am Freitag, 30. April 2004 15:29 schrieb Mark Koennecke:
>   High,
>
<snap>
>

Hi Mark,

some remarks to your problem with the autotools:

- I tried to rebuild your problem with RH 7.3 and I found that the versions of auto
  tools a little bit outdated. Nevertheless I tried to use them. I ran into trouble because
  the required versions of tools are not existing, and I reduced the requirements to
  the newest installed versions on RH:
	autoconf	- 2.53
	automake - 1.5
	libtool	-1.4.2

- According to this changes changed the autogen.sh script, to find the versions of 
  the tools. It was checked in into the CVS.

- After calling ./autogen.sh and ./configure and make all runs correctly without the 
  building of the java binding because I had no installed java.

- At least some remarks to the use of autotools:
	The tools: autoconf, automake, and libtool are only important for the developers
	of a package, e.g. NeXuS. The autotools support the developers during the 
	development in building new Makefiles from templates and find out the right
	configuration on the target machines. 

	The (final) user of the packages must not have installed any of the autotools.
	She takes the tarball, unpacks it and let run configure with the desired configure
	options. After that she calls make and make install and ready should the installation
	of the package if the developer has done a good job.

	To the tarball should of course belong the configure script and all othe necessary
	files. There is a very simple way to reach this goal:
		make dist
	is the command to get the tarball containing all the needed files. You may check
	your tarball by typing the command:
		make distcheck
	At the successfull end of this command you get an information that your tarball is
	now ready for the distribution. This file should be put on the server for download.

	Sometimes you get a message, that some files are missing or left during the make 
	distcheck run. For the solution of these problems exists two targets in the Makefile.am's
	DISTCLEANFILES (or CLEANFILES) for files which should be removed during the
	make distclean (resp. make clean) and EXTRA_DIST for files which should be 
	additionally incorporated into the distribution.

I hope I could give you and the other developers of NeXus some helpful informations of the
use of the autotools. 

I addition I could offer to you the that I would give a workshop to use the autotools at NOBUGS 
in October if you and the advisory commitee are agreed. I could give a deeper look into the use 
of the autotools than at the last NOBUGS at NIST.

Regards 

	Jens

>   Now, the autoconf stuff. It simply does not work for me. First I had
>   to install all the newest autotools to get going at all. Then
>   autogen.sh created a lot of error messages about libtool. I got around
>   this by pasting the contents of libtool.m4 into acinclude.m4. I found
>   this idea on the WWW. Then I got a configure script.
>
>   My suggestion: common usage is to include the configure script, we
>   should do the same.
>
>   The configure script processed without further errors. But compiling did
>   not work: it complained about a file libNexus.la missing. I then
>   proceeded to compile the test program manually.
>
>   This is against both Tru64Unix 5.1 and Redhat 7.3. I built the configure
>   script on the latter.
>
>   Can someone please put the manualy edited Makefiles back until this
>   autoconf stuff works properly?
>
> 				Best Regards,
>
> 					Mark
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NeXus-developers mailing list
> NeXus-developers at anl.gov
> http://www.neutron.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/nexus-developers

-- 

Jens Krüger

Technische Universität München
ZWE FRM-II
Lichtenberg-Str. 1
D-85747 Garching

Tel: + 49 89 289 14 716
Fax: + 49 89 289 14 666
mailto:jens.krueger at frm2.tum.de
http://www.frm2.tum.de/