"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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m going to make a rather broad and sweeping statement here: If you’re writing free or open source software targeting Unix or Linux systems, then you should be using the GNU Autotools.

Most of the general complaints I’ve ever seen aimed at the Autotools are ultimately associated with Automake, in the final analysis. The reason for this is simple: Automake provides the highest level of abstraction over the build system. This high level of abstraction is both apparent, and actual.

I am currently writing a Python application that makes use of GNU Autotools as build system and noticed that determining whether a specific Python module is installed is not that easy and no usable Autoconf macro exists. So I came up with my own solution, which I would like to share with you...

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.