How should I compile a gnome program?

[Pablo De Napoli <pdenapo mate dm uba ar>]

Hello!

My name is Pablo De Napoli and I work at the Mathemathics department of
Buenos Aires University.

Gnome is great! (long life to free-software!)

I would like to contribute to gnome , but I'm new to gnome (and to the
gnu-standards). Could you help me? I'm trying to read the gnome developers
tutorial. I want to ask you a question (or some):

How should I compile a gnome-program ? How will I tell the linker where
the libraries are (and cpp which files to include)  ? How should I write
the Makefile ? (or Makefile.am and configure.in) 

Has gnome some program to make it easy ? (like gtk-config). 

I was able to compile gnome-hello using the configure script in gnome-libs
, but how may I compile on it own ? ( I was able to do it modifying the
Makefile.am and configure.in from gcalc in gnome-utils , but I dodn't know
if I did it right , which autoconf macros should I use ?)

I think It would be good that the tutorial explain that questions, since
the gnu autoconf/automake are quit difficult to use (I mean: they are not
user-friendly).

Besides that I want to mention that gnome has two bugs (in version 1.0.50)

- if you start it in 8 bpp mode (8 bits display) gnome crashes with a
"Segmentation fault". This is not nice ...

- If you have no sound support gnome complains with a lot of messages.
There should be an option: no-sound 

And one thing more: I have a machine with no network access , do I need to
configure a loop-back interface ? (It seems that gnome doesn't work with
out it, even that applications that has nothing to do with the network.
How about a no-net option ? (This would save some memory and disk space ,I
guess this may be imposible since the "network" in gnome name)

Besides that: is there any developping evironment for gnome ? (something
like Borland-C Ide ?) (I know about glade, a wonderful idea)

Grettings from Argentina! and thank you. Bye!

				Pablo De Napoli
				pdenapo@dm.uba.ar