Getting started with autotools

Question

Anyone recommend how a person could get started with autotools in building a C project?

Answer 1

Follow the autotools tutorial.

You can also get the autobook. Chapter 4 covers a minimal GNU autotools project.

Answer 2

I would recommend this tutorial and get the book when it's released. The tutorial really helped me a lot, it even contains a step by step conversion of an existing (non trivial) project to autotools.

Answer 3

Alexandre Duret-Lutz's tutorial is my resource of choice.

There are also:

• Autotools: a practitioner's guide to Autoconf, Automake and Libtool
• Autotools Mythbuster

To me, the autobook is not up to date anymore and more difficult to read. However it still contains interesting chapters like Writing Portable Bourne Shell.

Also, consider learning about non-recursive automake which addresses the concerns raised by Peter Miller in his Recursive Make Considered Harmful article.

EDIT: for reference, there is also Autotools Tutorial for Beginners.