Introduction to the Autotools, part 1

This is an introduction to the autotools (autoconf, automake, and libtool) for software developers. It presumes you already know how to develop software on Unix-like systems (Linux, *BSD, Apple MacOS, Cygwin, Solaris, etc.).
The sample files, as well as an autoconf style guide and an explanation of how this video was created, are all available here: dwheeler.com/a...

[@alexanderreyer2134]

Absolutely great. It shows thousands of new things to us all. I normally click on compile in Visual Studio without knowing anything of the background.

[@Ravishankar-rl2ej]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Very use full tutorial. Thanks.

[@MnemonicCarrier]

Really cool intro music - very suitable for such a high-energy topic! Going to try this out now on my Fedora 29 KDE laptop :) Thanks for the video!

[@agodinhost2]

Awesome video! Awesome prononciation! Professional material. Really awesome.

[@muralidharanm2005]

This is the precise video and definition that I've been looking for, thanks for making it man.. really appreciate your work and effort.

[@xtifr]

Very nice, David, thanks. It's clear that the autotools have gotten a lot easier to use since I last beat my head on them a decade ago. I sort-of knew a lot of this stuff, but you're already helping me put it all in order so it actually makes sense. Now I'm off to check out the next vid.

[@JahanPaisley]

Thanks @David for this easy to digest video to understand GNU Tools!

[@codecanna]

This video is great! It's so clear, and has simple examples.

[@scrrification]

This was very useful. Thanks for making it!

[@benjaminmelikant3460]

Thanks, this video really helped me begin to understand how to use the autotools! I am currently trying to write a basic lexer / parser using flex and wanted to begin using the autotools rather than painful make file stuff

[@helium73]

Thanks for uploading this. I wouldn't know what the cryptic files in my SDL directory are otherwise.

[@bluehornet6752]

Brilliant video--thanks so much for making it (them)!

[@ranjansantra]

Very good introduction to autotools

[@DavidAWheeler]

Thanks!!

[@Eay5paev]

Thanks a lot. This is crystal clear. I need to make a shared library though, not just an executable. I hope it's explained in part 2 :)

[@LanceClark]

This tutorial helped me a lot. Thank you!

[@maciejhaj9934]

Great video. Thank you!

[@ferggermaster]

Thank you for this introduction. Very useful.

[@DavidAWheeler]

@spencer neilan: The tutorial presumes you already know how to develop software on Unix-like systems. It sounds like it's not a good match for you (yet). I would Google for an introduction to software development on Linux; then this material will (hopefully) be of more use to you. That said, a "Bourne shell" is program that implements the standard command line language used by Unix-like systems; "bash" and "dash" are common ones. It's roughly equivalent to "command.exe" and "cmd.exe" on Windows. Good luck!

[@bonbonpony]

03:47 Why couldn't it simply flush the outputs automatically after reaching the end of file? Why do we need to specifically tell it to do so? 04:07 What support files?

[@dev_among_men]

1. Because it just a bash script with M4 macro AC_OUTPUT creates commands to create those files

[@aabdev]

Dear David Wheeler, Thanks a lot for the lesson. Is it possible to use AutoTools in Windows 10 to build c programs? Regards, AB

[@DavidAWheeler]

I've used autotools on Windows using Cygwin. I believe there are other ways to do it, but I have not tried them.

[@sagaertj]

Hi nice explaining, i tried using autotools from eclipse, but still have a few problems : how do i test for pthread library , and how do i specify it needs to link with libpthread. How to handle additional include dirs?

[@dumgeewang]

Great tutorial, thank you!

[@DavidAWheeler]

Kpharris33: Different people prefer different pacing; there's no way to please everyone. Eay5paev says my introduction to the autotools was "crystal clear", and that's what I was going for. As for using the CLI, um, I *did* use the CLI, so your comment doesn't make sense to me. Also, my goal wasn't to explain everything... just enough to get people started so that the rest of the documentation would make sense.

[@davidmaxwell830]

Thank you for these videos. I'd managed to avoid learning autotools until now, but they're unavoidable for my current project.

[@anatolystrashkevich7621]

thank you David!

[@VikashKumar-uh4kx]

Can you please share the source code . This is really helpful.. Thanks a lot!

[@ArneBab]

How comes that I see the same people again and again while searching for relevant information? :) I just started looking deeper into autotools because I found pyconfigure. Nice talk!

[@이춘구-l1l]

Thanks a lot!!

[@ovidiub13]

example starts at 4:19

[@jichaoy]

thanks

[@BLOOMS]

what a mess computer science is. that was very clear though, thank you.

[@DavidAWheeler]

I wouldn't call this "Computer Science"; this is more Software Engineering. That is, this has nothing to do with theoretical constructs (which the term "computer science" often implies), instead, it's about building systems to solve human problems (aka engineering). I realize not everyone uses the terms this way, but I think it's useful to differentiate science from engineering.

[@bonbonpony]

Yeah, the way software engineering looks these days is more because of _lack_ of Computer Science in it :q It's more like "hey, let's just jumble those things together at random with lots of duct tape and see if it works" :q

[@ovidiub13]

the real example starts at 10:25

[@spencertron88]

Hi I come from an electrical engineering background, and none of this made sense. Wtf is a bison? wtf is a bourne shell script? I think this tutorial is a bit too advanced for me. How do I learn the basics??

[@2501bproject]

O'Reilly: Learning the Bash Shell, Unix Power Tools, Managing Projects with Make. 4k pages. Should be done in 2 months.

[@jacobfong5469]

Git sum boiiiiii

[@elliotalderson6609]

Are you here because you want to swear about what a mess autotools are? (I am, definitely)

[@Gustavo.AR.]

Green letters on a black background are the worst combination for a terminal. Please, let's avoid using it. Luckily, the era of monochrome monitors is long gone.