Quality guide to automake + autoconf and the other intricacies of a build process?

Question

I'm a fairly fresh developer, and so have absolutely no complex experience with build processes and the like. Most guides on the subject of automake and autoconf are difficult to understand or introduce unecessary complexity. I have several Perl scripts I need to deploy as CGI scripts on remote boxes (a mix of BSD and Ubuntu servers), and I could use a guide that clearly covers how to create a build process that will work on multiple environments without me reading 100-page long documents.

Anyone know of one?

Answer 1

http://www.flameeyes.eu/autotools-mythbuster/

Note, it is rather a work in progress.

Answer 2

See Module::Release and Modules as Programs. pp might also be of interest.

Answer 3

I created Module::Release as my personal build and deployment system. Although it comes with a release script that tests my modules in various dimensions and uploads them to CPAN, it's easy to convert it to something that does what you need. My intent was that people would use the basic idea but tailor it to their needs.

I gave a short talk on this at the Nordic Perl Workshop 2006.

Almost everyone I've talked to, however, seems to create their own release software, so nobody ends up reusing anything. :)

I like to deploy CGI programs as Perl modulinos. Through the normal Module::Build process, I specify the install location for the files. No big whoop. I talk about that sort of stuff in my book Mastering Perl.

I wish I had more time to write about this stuff not only for this answer, but in general. I don't have time to go into everything in this answer, but if you are interested we can talk about it further.