6.20. Installing Autoconf-2.52

Estimated build time:           1 minute
Estimated required disk space:  4 MB

6.20.1. Installation of Autoconf

Autoconf-2.52 is known to be too new for some applications. KDE-CVS is mostly reported not to work well with this automake release and downgrading to version 2.13 is recommended if you start experiencing any problems with this release.

Install Autoconf by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

6.20.2. Contents

The Autoconf package contains the autoconf, autoheader, autoreconf, autoscan, autoupdate and ifnames programs

6.20.3. Description

6.20.3.1. autoconf

Autoconf is a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of UNIX-like systems. The configuration scripts produced by Autoconf are independent of Autoconf when they are run, so their users do not need to have Autoconf.

6.20.3.2. autoheader

The autoheader program can create a template file of C #define statements for configure to use

6.20.3.3. autoreconf

If there are a lot of Autoconf-generated configure scripts, the autoreconf program can save some work. It runs autoconf (and autoheader, where appropriate) repeatedly to remake the Autoconf configure scripts and configuration header templates in the directory tree rooted at the current directory.

6.20.3.4. autoscan

The autoscan program can help to create a configure.in file for a software package. autoscan examines source files in the directory tree rooted at a directory given as a command line argument, or the current directory if none is given. It searches the source files for common portability problems and creates a file configure.scan which is a preliminary configure.in for that package.

6.20.3.5. autoupdate

The autoupdate program updates a configure.in file that calls Autoconf macros by their old names to use the current macro names.

6.20.3.6. ifnames

ifnames can help when writing a configure.in for a software package. It prints the identifiers that the package already uses in C preprocessor conditionals. If a package has already been set up to have some portability, this program can help to figure out what its configure needs to check for. It may help fill in some gaps in a configure.in generated by autoscan.

6.20.4. Dependencies

Autoconf-2.52 needs the following to be installed:


sh from the bash package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

m4 from the m4 package

make from the make package

perl from the perl package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package