Greetings all-
My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS* CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here and there...
I find that I'm being placed more and more into a 'quasi-developer' role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically, having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days trying to work through some of these types of issues.
I'm hoping someone knows of a good resource or book that explains the general 'open source' or '*NIX' method of application development, compilation, and dependency/library handling. Specifically, how to take source, and turn it into a "./configure, make, make install" type release and everything that is involved in doing so.
I certainly have experience compiling, installing, using software in this manner, but I would like (need?) to learn more about how it all works.
Google has been helpful if I'm looking for direct documentation of each of the standard tools (gcc, make, autoconf, libtool, etc), but I've been unable to find something that details the components together, and explains their relationship.
Again, my apologies for the OT post. I hope some bright minds on the list can shed a few thoughts.
--Tim
There's a review just now on Slashdot of a book that covers autoconf and friends -- it sounds like it would cover at least some of what you're after. There's an older O'Reilly book on Make that might be helpful too.
Jim Davis wrote:
There's a review just now on Slashdot of a book that covers autoconf and friends -- it sounds like it would cover at least some of what you're after. There's an older O'Reilly book on Make that might be helpful too.
Um, wait, how long?! Right, 14 years ago, I was *really* heavily working on makefiles, and the O'Reilly book is indispensable. Also, to the best of my knowledge, and I have looked at current makefiles, it's still standard, so I'd strongly recommend it.
mark
On Mon, Sep 27, 2010, Tim Nelson wrote:
Greetings all-
My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS* CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here and there...
I find that I'm being placed more and more into a 'quasi-developer' role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically, having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days trying to work through some of these types of issues.
I'm hoping someone knows of a good resource or book that explains the general 'open source' or '*NIX' method of application development, compilation, and dependency/library handling. Specifically, how to take source, and turn it into a "./configure, make, make install" type release and everything that is involved in doing so.
My first recommendation is always Kernighan and Pike's ``Unix Programming Environment'', ancient but still excellent.
Another is ``GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool'' by Vaughan, Elliston, Tromey, and Taylor.
Bill
On 9/27/2010 2:10 PM, Bill Campbell wrote:
Another is ``GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool'' by Vaughan, Elliston, Tromey, and Taylor.
Vaughan is still active on the autotools lists, and he occasionally pops in on threads mentioning his book, telling people they should be careful in applying what it says. It was written so long ago that it no longer conforms to current autotools idioms. Simply copying the code from the book is likely to get you a file that either gives lots of warnings or may not even work without changes, usually minor.
It's not useless, just superannuated.
On Mon, 2010-09-27 at 14:56 -0500, Tim Nelson wrote:
Greetings all-
My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS* CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here and there... I find that I'm being placed more and more into a 'quasi-developer' role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically, having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days trying to work through some of these types of issues.
There is an excellent series of articles on the Pedantic Programmer blog. http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=185 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=186 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=187 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=188 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=189 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=192 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=196 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=199 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=201 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=208
It walks through an example usage of make, pgk-config, etc...
On 09/28/2010 07:26 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
On Mon, 2010-09-27 at 14:56 -0500, Tim Nelson wrote:
Greetings all-
My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS* CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here and there... I find that I'm being placed more and more into a 'quasi-developer' role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically, having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days trying to work through some of these types of issues.
A new book on this topic has just been published
http://books.slashdot.org/story/10/09/27/1612236/Autotools
The review sounds promising.
Kal
Thank you all for the valuable suggestions!
--Tim
----- "Jim Davis" jdavis@lbto.org wrote:
There's a review just now on Slashdot of a book that covers autoconf and friends...
----- "Bill Campbell" centos@celestial.com wrote:
My first recommendation is always Kernighan and Pike's ``Unix Programming Environment'', ancient but still excellent.
Another is ``GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool'' by Vaughan, Elliston, Tromey, and Taylor.
----- "Adam Tauno Williams" awilliam@whitemice.org wrote:
There is an excellent series of articles on the Pedantic Programmer blog. http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=185 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=186 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=187 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=188 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=189 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=192 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=196 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=199 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=201 http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=208
----- "Kahlil Hodgson" kahlil.hodgson@dealmax.com.au wrote:
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Adam Tauno Williams -
Bill Campbell -
Jim Davis -
Kahlil Hodgson -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Tim Nelson -
Warren Young