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Using GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Autoheader

If you are bringing a preexisting command-line utility to Mac OS X that uses GNU autoconf, automake, or autoheader, you will probably find that it configures itself without modification (though the resulting configuration may be insufficient). Just run configure and make as you would on any other UNIX-based system.

If running the configure script fails because it doesn’t understand the architecture, try replacing the project’s config.sub and config.guess files with those available in /usr/share/automake-1.6. If you are distributing applications that use autoconf, you should include an up-to-date version of config.sub and config.guess so that Mac OS X users don’t have to do anything extra to build your project.

If that still fails, you may need to run /usr/bin/autoconf on your project to rebuild the configure script before it works. Mac OS X includes autoconf in the BSD tools package. Beyond these basics, if the project does not build, you may need to modify your makefile using some of the tips provided in the following sections. After you do that, more extensive refactoring may be required.

Some programs may use autoconf macros that are not supported by the version of autoconf that shipped with Mac OS X. Because autoconf changes periodically, you may actually need to get a new version of autoconf if you need to build the very latest sources for some projects. In general, most projects include a prebuilt configure script with releases, so this is usually not necessary unless you are building an open source project using sources obtained from CVS or from a daily source snapshot.

However, if you find it necessary to upgrade autoconf, you can get a current version from http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/. Note that autoconf, by default, installs in /usr/local/, so you may need to modify your PATH environment variable to use the newly updated version. Do not attempt to replace the version installed in /usr/.

For additional information about using the GNU autotoolset, see http://autotoolset.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html and the manual pages autoconf, automake, and autoheader.

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