Mail Archives: djgpp/2005/12/26/14:15:19
Radical NetSurfer <RadSurfer AT yahoo DOT com> writes:
>What would also be nice is if someone would please take the
>time to sit down and write out a nice little tutorial, step by step,
>of how to use Autoconf/autom4te. Theres documentation that
>comes with it sure, but it would be nice to have a "how to" or
>"introduction to" with details such as what djgpp-packages are
>needed to properly implement autoconf, which versions are
>highly recommended, and downloaded from specifically which
>ftp site, etc. Then everybody will be "on the same page" as it
>were. And we can all discover how these new tools are supposed
>to work.
I am not sure that this would help, since the main time that you
use the tools when they might fail is in porting a program that is
not officially part of the DJGPP suite. Each of the official DJGPP
programs has generally been tweaked to compile nicely.
That said, you generally need a matching pair of autoconf and
automake. You always need perl and frequently need libtool. You should
have recent versions of most of the other tools.
I usually start out by saving the "aclocal.m4" file that comes
with the distribution, since some package maintainers put macro
definitions there instead of in "acinclude.m4". The first step is to
read the "install" or "installation" file to see if there are specific
instructions or problems noted. Next read a file called "problems" if
it exists. See if there is a file "install.djgpp" or "install.dos".
Look for a subdirectory that might have specific instruction. If there
are no specific installation instructions for DJGPP, generally follow
the instructions for unix. You are less likely to have trouble if you
are in an environment that supports long file names and if you use
paths in the form of /dev/c/... or /dev/env/DJDIR/... rather than in
the form of "c:/...".
If there are no specific instructions, I would start by going to the
root of the source files and running "aclocal". You may need to addd
the "-I" option to specify directories that have macro definitions. If
the distribution uses libtool, next run "libtoolize". Many programs
use a "config.h" file. If so, you need to run "autoheader", which
creates "config.h.in". The next step is to run automake to create
all your "Makefile.in" files. You may want to run it with options
"-a --foreign". If there have been no errors, the next step is to
run "autoconf", which creates your "configure" file. Once that is
created, you can run "./configure --help" to see the specific options
available in that package. To get the program to build properly in
DJGPP, you might need to specify certain options, or set values in
the environment for "CFLAGS" and/or "CPPFLAGS". When porting a new
program, I find it helpful to keep logs of all the screen messages, so
that warnings and errors can be addressed.
After building a program that hasn't previously been ported to DJGPP,
test it looking for problems. See if there is a test suite that might
be invoked by "make check" or "make test".
Once you have a working program, you may want to go back and tweak the
distribution so that it still works in a 8+3 filename environment and
accepts filenames in "c:/..." or even in "c:\..." style.
As far as other program prerequisites, autoconf just runs a series of
perl scripts. Each program may have its own specific scripts (that is
what aclocal.m4 is about). I don't know that you can predict what each
author has put into those. If something doesn't work, you need to read
the source and see what it is trying to do, then decide why it isn't
working and how to fix it.
The above may not be elegant, but it has worked for me in porting lots
of programs to DJGPP.
Doug
--
Doug Kaufman
Internet: dkaufman AT rahul DOT net
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