3. Some example packages

3.1 A simple example, start to finish
3.2 A classic program
3.3 Building etags and ctags

3.1 A simple example, start to finish

Let's suppose you just finished writing zardoz, a program to make your head float from vortex to vortex. You've been using Autoconf to provide a portability framework, but your `Makefile.in's have been ad-hoc. You want to make them bulletproof, so you turn to Automake.

The first step is to update your `configure.in' to include the commands that automake needs. The way to do this is to add an AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE call just after AC_INIT:

AC_INIT(zardoz, 1.0) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE ...

Since your program doesn't have any complicating factors (e.g., it doesn't use gettext, it doesn't want to build a shared library), you're done with this part. That was easy!

Now you must regenerate `configure'. But to do that, you'll need to tell autoconf how to find the new macro you've used. The easiest way to do this is to use the aclocal program to generate your `aclocal.m4' for you. But wait... maybe you already have an `aclocal.m4', because you had to write some hairy macros for your program. The aclocal program lets you put your own macros into `acinclude.m4', so simply rename and then run:

mv aclocal.m4 acinclude.m4 aclocal autoconf

Now it is time to write your `Makefile.am' for zardoz. Since zardoz is a user program, you want to install it where the rest of the user programs go: bindir. Additionally, zardoz has some Texinfo documentation. Your `configure.in' script uses AC_REPLACE_FUNCS, so you need to link against `@LIBOBJS@'. So here's what you'd write:

bin_PROGRAMS = zardoz zardoz_SOURCES = main.c head.c float.c vortex9.c gun.c zardoz_LDADD = @LIBOBJS@ info_TEXINFOS = zardoz.texi

Now you can run automake --add-missing to generate your `Makefile.in' and grab any auxiliary files you might need, and you're done!

3.2 A classic program

GNU hello is renowned for its classic simplicity and versatility. This section shows how Automake could be used with the GNU Hello package. The examples below are from the latest beta version of GNU Hello, but with all of the maintainer-only code stripped out, as well as all copyright comments.

Of course, GNU Hello is somewhat more featureful than your traditional two-liner. GNU Hello is internationalized, does option processing, and has a manual and a test suite.

Here is the `configure.in' from GNU Hello:

dnl Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure script. AC_INIT(src/hello.c) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(hello, 1.3.11) AM_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h) dnl Set of available languages. ALL_LINGUAS="de fr es ko nl no pl pt sl sv" dnl Checks for programs. AC_PROG_CC AC_ISC_POSIX dnl Checks for libraries. dnl Checks for header files. AC_STDC_HEADERS AC_HAVE_HEADERS(string.h fcntl.h sys/file.h sys/param.h) dnl Checks for library functions. AC_FUNC_ALLOCA dnl Check for st_blksize in struct stat AC_ST_BLKSIZE dnl internationalization macros AM_GNU_GETTEXT AC_OUTPUT([Makefile doc/Makefile intl/Makefile po/Makefile.in \ src/Makefile tests/Makefile tests/hello], [chmod +x tests/hello])

The `AM_' macros are provided by Automake (or the Gettext library); the rest are standard Autoconf macros.

The top-level `Makefile.am':

EXTRA_DIST = BUGS ChangeLog.O SUBDIRS = doc intl po src tests

As you can see, all the work here is really done in subdirectories.

The `po' and `intl' directories are automatically generated using gettextize; they will not be discussed here.

In `doc/Makefile.am' we see:

info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi hello_TEXINFOS = gpl.texi

This is sufficient to build, install, and distribute the GNU Hello manual.

Here is `tests/Makefile.am':

TESTS = hello EXTRA_DIST = hello.in testdata

The script `hello' is generated by configure, and is the only test case. make check will run this test.

Last we have `src/Makefile.am', where all the real work is done:

bin_PROGRAMS = hello hello_SOURCES = hello.c version.c getopt.c getopt1.c getopt.h system.h hello_LDADD = @INTLLIBS@ @ALLOCA@ localedir = $(datadir)/locale INCLUDES = -I../intl -DLOCALEDIR=\"$(localedir)\"

3.3 Building etags and ctags

Here is another, trickier example. It shows how to generate two programs (ctags and etags) from the same source file (`etags.c'). The difficult part is that each compilation of `etags.c' requires different cpp flags.

bin_PROGRAMS = etags ctags ctags_SOURCES = ctags_LDADD = ctags.o etags.o: etags.c $(COMPILE) -DETAGS_REGEXPS -c etags.c ctags.o: etags.c $(COMPILE) -DCTAGS -o ctags.o -c etags.c

Note that there is no etags_SOURCES definition. Automake will implicitly assume that there is a source file named `etags.c', and define rules to compile `etags.o' and link `etags'. The etags.o: etags.c rule supplied by the above `Makefile.am', will override the Automake generated rule to build `etags.o'.

ctags_SOURCES is defined to be empty--that way no implicit value is substituted. Because we have not listed the source of `ctags', we have to tell Automake how to link the program. This is the purpose of the ctags_LDADD line. A ctags_DEPENDENCIES variable, holding the dependencies of the `ctags' target will be automatically generated by Automake from the contant of ctags_LDADD.

The above rules won't work if your compiler doesn't accept both `-c' and `-o'. The simplest fix for this is to introduce a bogus dependency (to avoid problems with a parallel make):

etags.o: etags.c ctags.o $(COMPILE) -DETAGS_REGEXPS -c etags.c ctags.o: etags.c $(COMPILE) -DCTAGS -c etags.c && mv etags.o ctags.o

Also, these explicit rules do not work if the de-ANSI-fication feature is used (see section 9.13 Automatic de-ANSI-fication). Supporting de-ANSI-fication requires a little more work:

etags._o: etags._c ctags.o $(COMPILE) -DETAGS_REGEXPS -c etags.c ctags._o: etags._c $(COMPILE) -DCTAGS -c etags.c && mv etags._o ctags.o

As it turns out, there is also a much easier way to do this same task. Some of the above techniques are useful enough that we've kept the example in the manual. However if you were to build etags and ctags in real life, you would probably use per-program compilation flags, like so:

bin_PROGRAMS = ctags etags ctags_SOURCES = etags.c ctags_CFLAGS = -DCTAGS etags_SOURCES = etags.c etags_CFLAGS = -DETAGS_REGEXPS

In this case Automake will cause `etags.c' to be compiled twice, with different flags. De-ANSI-fication will work automatically. In this instance, the names of the object files would be chosen by automake; they would be `ctags-etags.o' and `etags-etags.o'. (The name of the object files rarely matters.)