The GNU autotools programs (autoconf, automake and libtool), which are used for making software portable between Unix-like operating systems, have been around for more than fifteen years now, but their use is still regarded by many programmers to be a dark art.

"The GNU Autotools (the GNU Build System) is a group of utilities designed to make it easy for developers to create software that is portable across many Unix-like operating systems. Unfortunately, most Autotools documentation is merely reference material, and a serious guide to the tools is needed.

This is the second part of our series on the GNU autotools system, looking at autoconf, automake and libtool. In the previous installment, we looked at building a very simple C program, with just one source file, using autotools. In this article, we'll extend our program slightly, by shifting some data into a header file, and adding a man page.

John Calcote, a C++ programmer gives a detailed consideration of the open source progammming toolset via this book review - strengths, weaknesses, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Part two of a series of articles looking at learning the widely used GNU autoconf, automake and libtool utilities, by example. This installment covers adding manual pages to distributions, and the EXTRA_DIST target.

In Chapter 1, I gave a brief overview of the Autotools and some of the resources that are currently available to help reduce the learning curve. In this chapter, we’re going to step back a little and examine project organization techniques that are applicable to all projects, not just those whose build system is managed by the Autotools.

Including Dia in this series is just a bit of a stretch, because it is not a conventional "vector graphic editor". Instead, Dia operates at a somewhat higher level of abstraction. But since that abstraction is very appropriate for dataflow diagrams (such as the one I picked as a comparison project), I think it's important to note what it can do.

I’m an “autotools lover” in the sense that i prefer having to deal with autotools-based buildsystem that most custom build-system that are as broken as they can possibly be. Or with cmake.

"...Lisp is a list-based language, and although most modern lisps provide some higher level abstraction for structures or records, it is not uncommon to use simple lists and functions to represent them.