Configure

Configure is my own autoconfigure script for C programs, something like the GNU autoconf program, except that it’s

• free,
• written in bourne shell (with functions; the old v7 shells won’t work),
• doesn’t use config.cache files,
• doesn’t require that you install a huge GNU toolchain to do anything with it.

Configure is not nearly as complete as autoconf, because I'm only adding things to it as I need them.

Currently, configure is used in Levee, Magicfilter, ndialog, xrpm, Postoffice, cwatch, markdown, and annotations.

Source Code

• v0.59, is, as you can probably guess, a rollup of a bunch of tiny feature-ettes. It contains:

  1. More support for --srcdir.
  2. When configure.sh is run, it creates a config.md script that is used to create directory trees in a hopefully portable manner.
  3. Add the AC_SCALAR_TYPES function, which creates types for 32 (DWORD), 16(WORD), and 8(BYTE) bit scalars.
  4. Add the prefix AC_QUIET, which makes a detect function run without any output.
  5. Add the AC_CHECK_STRUCT function, which checks for the existance of a structure.
  6. Add the AC_PROG_AWK function, which checks for the existance of awk.
  7. Add the AC_INCLUDE function, which adds a #include to config.h.
  8. Add the AC_CHECK_RESOLVER function, which looks for a bind4 compatable version of the Berkeley resolver library.

• v0.53 starts adding configure-side support for --srcdir (installing a package in one directory and building it in a different directory.) This isn’t documented yet (because it’s actually fairly complicated, and hasn’t been tested anywhere except Linux and FreeBSD, but it roughly works as follows; in your Makefile.in’s, you set VPATH = @srcdir@, define your own makefile rules so that .c.o: puts .o files out in the current directory (Berkeley make does this automatically, GNU make does not), modify your compilation rules so they include things from @srcdir@/{place} instead of simple {place}, and finally when you publish a release of your software, running joincfg.sh to collapse configure.inc and configure.sh together. (the magicfilter package does this from version 2.2.i onwards.)

• v0.51 defines a OS_<type> variable in config.h and configure.sh, and defines the substitions @CONFIGURE_FILES@ (the files created by configure.sh) and @GENERATED_FILES@ (the files generated from .in files during AC_OUTPUT.)

• v0.4 fixes a little bug in the generation of the config.cmd file; CC and CFLAGS were not being quoted properly on some platforms.

• v0.3 has a few changes in configure.inc that make it work on Solaris and SLS Linux. I've also added an install_manpages script that can be used to do what you'd expect it to do.

• v0.2 has more detail in the HOWTO and some tweaks to make it work better on Irix machines.

• v0.1 has a minimal testsuite, a small samples directory, and the beginnings of a HOWTO file to tell you how it’s done.