I'm trying to write a configure.ac file such that the resulting configure script searches for a library directory containing a given static library e.g. libsomething.a. How can I do this? At the moment I have it check just one location with:
AC_CHECK_FILE([/usr/local/lib/libsomething.a],[AC_SUBST(libsomething,"-L/usr/local/lib -lsomething")],[AC_SUBST(libcfitsio,'')])
But I want it to try and find it automatically. And if the library isn't in one of the default locations, I'd like configure to say that the library wasn't found and that a custom location can be specified with --use-something=path as is usually done. So I also need to then check if --use-something=path is provided. I'm pretty new at creating configure files, and the M4 documentation isn't very easy to follow, so would appreciate any help.
Thanks!
It's not the job of configure to search where libraries are installed. it should only make sure they are available to the linker. If the user installed them in a different location, he knows how to call ./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/the/location/include LDFLAGS=-L/the/location/lib so that the tools will find the library (this is explained in the --help output of configure and in the standard INSTALL file).
Also --with-package and --enable-package macros are not supposed to be used to specify paths, contrary to what many third-party macros will do. The GNU Coding Standards explicitly prohibit this usage:
Do not use a --with option to
specify the file name to use to find
certain files. That is outside the scope
of what --with options are for.
CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS are already here to address the problem, so why redevelop and maintain another mechanism?
The best way to figure this out is to look at other autoconf macros that do something similar. Autoconf macros are an amalgam of Bourne shell script and M4 code, so they can literally solve any computable problem.
Here's a link to a macro I wrote for MySQL++ that does this: mysql++.m4.
Related
i want to move from using CMake to Premake for my current project, but im usig vim and the YCM plugin which is really great for making my setup like an IDE. However, the plugin needs compilation flags file which is produced when running CMake. Is there something for Premake to generate a file like that as well?
Premake does not do this in its current state (alpha 13). If you have some insights as to what is necessary for getting it to work, the best thing to do would be to submit a ticket in the issue tracker.
I'm afraid, if your new build system does not generate that compilation flags file (yet), you'll need to maintain your own (hand-crafted) one. You can find an example at https://github.com/Valloric/ycmd/blob/0e999dbee209ea79a522259816ce3a68b7d6cddc/examples/.ycm_extra_conf.py.
I would advice to have (at least) one per project rather than one generic one in your $HOME.
Although I have to admit, that it would be beneficial to get it created and in sync with the actual build system, I don't find it too troublesome to maintain it manually. At the end of the day it only contains the C++ standard you want to use, a set of preprocessor symbols and a set of both system and user include directories.
I have two fairly identical (Linux-) systems but one with just a minimum set of packages installed. On one system I have a running (binary/ELF) executable which I want to copy over to the other system (with the minimum setup).
Now I need a way to copy all needed shared libraries as well. Currently I start the application on the source system and then go through the output of
lsof | grep <PID>
or
ldd <FILE>
to get a list of all libraries currently loaded by the application and copy them over manually.
Now my question is: before I start to automate this approach and run into lots of little problems and end up with yet another reinvented wheel - Is there a tool which already automates this for me? The tool I'm dreaming of right now would work like this:
$ pack-bin-for-copy <MY_EXE>
which creates a .tgz with all needed shared libraries needed to run this executable.
or
$ cp-bin <MY_EXE> user#target:/target/path/
which would just copy the binary once..
Note: I do NOT need a way to professionally deploy an application (via RPM/apt/etc.). I'm looking for a 'just for now' solution.
One tool that does something similar to what you suggest is linuxdeploy. While the tool is intended to ease the creation of an AppImage (see here for more information), it will pack your executable with any dependencies into a directory. Then you can just create a 'tgz' file of that directory instead of an AppImage.
ldd usuage is correct if you also enable -Wl,--no-dynamic-lookup at link time.
I am using F# in Visual Studio 2012 and this may seem like a dumb question but I cannot figure out how to specify include directories, specifically for binaries. I see how to do it for F# interactive using the #I directive and it works there, but the #I option is not available in the non-interactive form. The compiler error message says to use the -I compiler option. I have looked under Project Properties, where the only subsections visible are Application, Build, Build Events, Debug, and Reference Paths none of which provides any obivous way to specify an include directory path. The help system isnt much help as it seems to reference sections that are unavailable.
Well i still have the problem with VS12 but at least i have a workaround, by calling the compiler from the command line. You have to use the -r option to specify the location of the dll:
fsc -r:<complete path to dll> <fname>
However when i try the corresponding step in VS (by trying to set one of the Reference Paths) it says there are no items found in the DLL folder. So perhaps someone familiar with CS can help out
On Linux, when I execute ./configure it generates header files and also .c files (besides Makefiles), right? How can I get configure to do that?
You will probably want to create a configure.ac (but depend on the autoconf version), but read here, to give you an idea what should you create and what is auto generated. It has good covered on the autotools topic.
It's typically used to generate config header, that contains various defines (often libraries & function present or not). But this happens only if autotools were instructed to create configure doing that.
You define what goes to (and to which header exactly) in configure.ac (input file to autotools). See AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, AC_CHECK_HEADER, AC_CHECK_LIB and similar macros. See autoconf manual for details. Also read through complete tutorial jasonw linked. And see how things are done in some existing projects.
I downloaded a set of source code for a program in a book and I got a makefile.
I am quite new to Linux, and I want to know whether there is any way I can see the actual source code written in C?
Or what exactly am I to do with it?
It sounds like you may not have downloaded the complete source code from the book web site. As mentioned previously, a Makefile is only the instructions for building the source code, and the source code is normally found in additional files with names ending in .c and .h. Perhaps you could look around the book web site for more files to download?
Or, since presumably the book web site is public, let us know which one it is and somebody will be happy to point you in the right direction.
A Makefile does not contain any source itself. It is simply a list of instructions in a special format which specifies what commands should be run, and in what order, to build your program. If you want to see where the source is, your Makefile will likely contain many "filename.c"'s and "filename.h"'s. You can use grep to find all the instances of ".c" and ".h" in the file, which should correspond to the C source and header files in the project. The following command should do the trick:
grep -e '\.[ch]' Makefile
To use the Makefile to build your project, simply typing make should do something reasonable. If that doesn't do what you want, look for unindented lines ending in a colon; these are target names, and represent different arguments you can specify after "make" to build a particular part of your project, or build it in a certain way. For instance, make install, make all, and make debug are common targets.
You probably have GNU Make on your system; much more information on Makefiles can be found here.
It looks like you also need to download the SB-AllSource.zip file. Then use make (with the Makefile that you've already downloaded) to build.