User guide

Autotools Plug-in for Eclipse

The Autotools suite's most commonly-used tools are:

autoconf

Generates the configure script from an input file (e.g. configure.ac)

automake

Creates the Makefile for a project on a specific system

autoscan

Generates a preliminary input file (i.e. configure.scan), which can be edited to create a final

configure.ac to be used by autoconf

All tools in the Autotools suite are part of the Development Tools group package. You can install

this package group to install the entire Autotools suite, or simply use yum to install any tools in the

suite as you wish.

4.3.1. Autotools Plug-in for Eclipse

The Autotools suite is also integrated into the Eclipse IDE via the Autotools plug-in. This plug-in

provides an Eclipse graphical user interface for Autotools, which is suitable for most C/C++ projects.

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, this plug-in only supports two templates for new C/C++ projects:

• An empty project

• A "hello world" application

The empty project template is used when importing projects into the C/C++ Development Toolkit that

already support Autotools. Future updates to the Autotools plug-in will include additional graphical user

interfaces (e.g. wizards) for creating shared libraries and other complex scenarios.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 version of the Autotools plug-in also does not integrate git or

mercurial into Eclipse. As such, Autotools projects that use git repositories will need to be

checked out outside the Eclipse workspace. Afterwards, you can specify the source location for such

projects in Eclipse. Any repository manipulation (e.g. commits, updates) will need to be done via the

command line.

4.3.2. Configuration Script

The most crucial function of Autotools is the creation of the configure script. This script tests

systems for tools, input files, and other features it can use in order to build the project

. The

configure script generates a Makefile which allows the make tool to build the project based on the

system configuration.

To create the configure script, create an input file and feed it to an Autotools utility to create

theconfigure script. This input file is typically configure.ac or Makefile.am; the former is

usually processed by autoconf, while the latter is fed to automake.

If a Makefile.am input file is available, the automake utility creates a Makefile template (i.e.

Makefile. in), which may refer to information collected at configuration time. For example, the

Makefile may need to link to a particular library if and only if that library is already installed. When

the configure script runs, automake will use the Makefile. in templates to create a Makefile.

For information about tests that configure can perform, refer to the following link:

http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Existing-Tests