GNU Autotools Learning Notes

In June, 2014, I embarked on a journey of learning GNU Autotools or GNU Build System. It's still on-going and the more I read, the more I fell I truly know nothing, not even C, hence C Learning Notes.

This wiki page would try to write down what I have read, learned, and noted down. Hopefully, it would not be a huge mess to read.

Contents

• Tasks
• Reading materials
• Notes
  • Autoconf
  • Bash loadable builtin
    • Distribution packages
• Related issues

Tasks

• GNU Autotools particulars
  • Portability
• Incorporation of Bash and C implementations (e932715, 1c90099)
  • Disable either by choice
  • Install either or both by choice
• Shell installation (e932715)
• Unittest (3bc45b9, d6c2d84)
• Benchmark (e932715)
• I18n/L10n
  • GNU gettext
• Library (539371c)
  • pkg-config (e831f4d)
• Binding
  • Python (8ada372)
• Bash loadable builtin (a9ba939)

Reading materials

• GNU Build System
  • Autotools Tutorial by Alexandre Duret-Lutz [via]
  • Autotools Mythbuster by Diego Elio Pettenò
  • The Basics of Autotools of Gentoo Development Guide
  • Lecture about the GNU Autotools by Shlomi Fish [via]
• Autoconf
  • Autotest
    • Software Testing with Autotest
• Automake
• Portability Library (Gnulib)
• Libtool
• gettext
• Bash loadable built-in
  • Using and Writing Bash Dynamically Loadable Built-In Commands (Bash 3.1)
  • GNU bash Dynamically Loadable Built-in
  • Appendix C: Loadable Built-ins, Learning the Bash Shell: Unix Shell Programming
  • Chapter 16: Configuring and Customizing bash, Bash Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Bash Users
  • Internal Bash functions, useful when writing loadable builtins
  • Stack Overflow (most likely would be removed)
    • Loadable Bash Builtin
    • Distributing loadable builtin bash modules
• GitHub: Release Your Software
• Ubuntu Documentation Style Guide [via]

Notes

Some quick links and notes while reading the materials.

Autoconf

• Portability of C Functions and Headers

Bash loadable builtin

Distribution packages

• Debian: bash-builtins

• Gentoo: plugins USE flag for header installation

  doins *.h builtins/*.h examples/loadables/*.h include/*.h \
          lib/{glob/glob.h,tilde/tilde.h}

• Ubuntu: bash-builtins

Related issues

• GNU Autotools learning project
• Into C and GNU Autotools learning project