Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool: Installing the tools

| ## A.3 Installing the tools When installing GNU Autotools, it is a good idea to install the tools in the same location (eg. ``/usr/local'`). This allows the tools to discover each others' presence at installation time. The location shown in the examples below will be the default, ``/usr/local'`, as this choice will make the tools available to all users on the system. Installing Autoconf is usually a quick and simple exercise, since Autoconf itself uses ``configure'` to prepare itself for building and installation. Automake and Libtool can be installed using the same steps as for Autoconf. As a matter of personal preference, I like to create a separate build tree when configuring packages to keep the source tree free of derived files such as object files. Applying what we know about invoking ``configure'` (see section 3. How to run configure and make), we can now configure and build Autoconf. The only ``configure'` option we're likely to want to use is ``--prefix'`, so if you want to install the tools in another location, include this option on the command line. It might be desirable to install the package elsewhere when operating in networked environments.
    $ mkdir ac-build && cd ac-build
    $ ~/autoconf-2.13/configure
You will see ``configure'` running its tests and producing a ``Makefile'` in the build directory:
      creating cache ./config.cache
      checking for gm4... no
      checking for gnum4... no
      checking for m4... /usr/bin/m4
      checking whether we are using GNU m4... yes
      checking for mawk... no
      checking for gawk... gawk
      checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
      checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
      updating cache ./config.cache
      creating ./config.status
      creating Makefile
      creating testsuite/Makefile
To build Autoconf, type the following:
    $ make all
Autoconf has no architecture-specific files to be compiled, so this process finishes quickly. To install files into ``/usr/local'`, it may be necessary to become the root user before installing.
    # make install
Autoconf is now installed on your system.

This document was generated by Gary V. Vaughan on February, 8 2006 using texi2html