Re: [Anjuta-list] Newbie Question: Checking for Libs

[Biswapesh Chattopadhyay <biswapesh_chatterjee tcscal co in>]

This is a pretty good question and I'm afraid the answer is: we do a
pretty shitty job of making the user's autotools handling pain easier.
This is mainly due to two reasons:

1) Limitations of our project manager. It does not understand
hierarchies, cannot parse configure.in/Makefile.am, etc., cannot handle
multiple targets, etc. We are hoping to correct this in Anjuta2 and in a
future GNOME2 port of Anjuta1.

2) There is no standard way to check for a particular library, header
file, etc. The GNOME (and KDE I think) teams are trying to standardize
on pkg-config but currently, there are various ways to check for package
installation. The main ways are:
	a) pkg-config. Supported my all GNOME2 (and probably KDE3) packages +
many current libraries. To check for a package which supports
pkg-config, you need to add this to your configure.in:
	PKG_CHECK_MODULES(YOURPACKAGE, yourpackage >= versionnrequired)
	AC_SUBST(YOURPACKAGE_CFLAGS)
	AC_SUBST(YOURPACKAGE_LIBS)

Then in your Makefile.am, you'll need to add:
	INCLUDES += $(YOURPACKAGE_CFLAGS)
	LDFLAGS += $(YOURPACKAGE_LIBS)

(Substitute YOURPACKAGE with your package name in caps and yourpackage
with your package name in lowercase)

	b) The various package-config scripts. These are available for GNOME
1.x, wxWIndows, PCRE, curl and various other packages. If a package does
not support pkg-config, it is very likely that it will support a package
specific config script. For example, if you want to use GLib in your
program, you add this to your configure.in:
	AC_PATH_PROG(GLIB_CONFIG, glib-config,no)
	if test x$GLIB_CONFIG = xno; then
	  AC_MSG_ERROR(Couldn't find glib-config, please install the GLib
package.)
	fi
	GLIB_CFLAGS=`glib-config --cflags`
	GLIB_LIBS=`glib-config --libs`
	AC_SUBST(GLIB_LIBS)
	AC_SUBST(GLIB_CFLAGS)

Then, in your Makefile.am, you'll need to add:
	INCLUDES += $(GLIB_CFLAGS)
	LDFLAGS += $(GLIB_LIBS)

	c) If you want to check for a library header file, you can use the
AC_CHECK_HEADERS macro like this:
		AC_CHECK_HEADER(myheader.h)
	This will work provided the headers are in the standard path.

	d) To check is a particular library function is available, you can use
AC_CHECK_LIB. For example, add this to your configure.in to check if you
have a sufficiently recent version of aspell:
	AC_CHECK_LIB(pspell, new_pspell_manager,,[AC_MSG_ERROR("some error")])
	(Example taken directly for balsa)

	e) To simply check for a function, you can use AC_CHECK_FUNCS in your
configure.in like this:
	AC_CHECK_FUNCS(fnmatch)

	f) To check whether something compiles and works, you can use
AC_TRY_COMPILE

There are lots of other ways, most of which have already been made easy
for you through autoconf macros. You can find out more by reading the
macros in /usr/share/aclocal.

The best way to do it is to just copy what others before you have done.
I find it very handy to have the entire GNOME2 CVS on my disk. When I
need to know/use something, I just grep for it and copy-paste it. It is
the fastest and the best way.

Finally, a warning: Since you'll have to make these changes by hand,
make sure that you've set the overwriting of configure.in and
Makefile.am off in Project->Configure.

Hope this helps.

Rgds,
Biswa.

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to know, how to control the automake/autoconf stuff with
> anjuta.
> I do not really know much about this, so I hope that anjuta makes it
> somehow
> easier for me.
> How do I tell anjuta to check for a special library, header file, program
> and so
> on. I go to the project explorer, rightclick->configure project:
> Now what I have to type?
> If its too basic, please give me an example and/or some info-sources.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
>                   Andre.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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