Internals: Autotools Build System

Work in progress. Contributors: Tim Duff, (your-name-here)

Minimal setup

Step 1 is perhaps optional if you don't intend to submit a pull request.

README: generally a good place to start
BUILD directory: "This directory may be used as a convenient location for the build directory trees."
INSTALL & INSTALL.mac: Instructions. See OS-specific cheatsheets (to be written.)
Macaulay2 directory: contains most of Macaulay2 itself, w/ important subdirectories
- e: the engine (C++ language)
- d: the interpreter (D language)
- m2: the top level core (Macaulay2 language)
- packages: where most users' code goes
- also c directory: C code obtained from D code is placed here
configure.ac: autoconf script that generates actual configure file
distributions:

libraries
- obtained from tar files
- eg 4ti2, gfan
- each directory contains instructions for how to build
submodules
- like "libraries", but obtained from git

GNU paradigm: configure, then make. In this example, build directory is M2/M2/BUILD/cleveland

cd M2/M2/
make
./configure -h
mkdir BUILD/cleveland
cd BUILD/cleveland
../../configure --enable-download
make

Tips

potentially helpful make flags
- -jn : use n threads
- -C dir : recompile only in dir
there are OS-specific additional instructions
- for instance, set FC = gfortran for Debian systems
configure options
- some standard (like --help)
- some less standard (--disable-gfan)

Things configure does:

output: version, environment variables, OS, many checks
checks for libraries (eg. mpir) and builds if not there / not right version. tricky. cMake improvements?
starts to create files needed for make
transformation: eg. foo.in -> foo. replaces identifiers (@PACKAGE_NAME) with their system-specific values
can define macros w/ autoconf
- AC_DEFUN. some other way?
- arguments need square brackets -- final part created by AC_OUTPUT

Quick links:

Macaulay2