Linux

48185 readers

1175 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Do people use Autotools in new projects anymore? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I had a teeny pet project using GNU assembly that was going to target two platforms.

Instead of keeping my handwritten worst-practices Makefile I decided to try GNU Autotools for the educated reasons of:

Text scrolling by looks pretty
Vague memories of ./configure make make install tarballs

I got hit with mysterious macro errors, recompile with -fPIE errors (didn't need this before?), autotools trying to run gcc on a .o file w/ the same options as an .s file, "no rule for all:", and other things a noob would run into. (I don't need a bugfix, since my handspun Makefile is "working on my machine" with uname -m.) So there's a bit of a learning curve here, inhibited by old documentation ~and~ ~more~ ~quietly,~ ~genAI~ ~being~ ~shittier~ ~than~ ~normal~ ~in~ ~this~ ~department~

With this I ask:

Do people still use Autotools for non-legacy stuff? If not, what do people choose for a new project's build system and why?

edit: trimmed an aside

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Are you building a C/C++ project that should run on BSD, Gnu/Linux and other platforms? Then maybe use autotools. All distro tooling will easily be able to handle it.

Are you just building some small project that will never make it into a distro, maybe just use something simpler. Or even just a plain makefile.