Automake/Autoconf

Alastair Reid alastair@reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk
Wed, 21 May 2003 22:57:35 +0100


On Wednesday 21 May 2003 10:04 pm, Alain Cremieux wrote:
> I would like to know if there exists some kind of template / sample to
> create a 'configure.in' for a Haskell library ?

One approach is to start with a tried and tested configure.in and cut out the 
bits you don't need.  Good examples to start from would be the ghc configure 
script (fptools/configure.in plus fptools/aclocal.m4) or the Hugs configure 
script (hugs98/src/unix/configure.in plus hugs98/src/unix/aclocal.m4).

I think a better approach is to start with a tried and tested configure.in and 
keep the bits you don't need.  It sounds odd to include all kinds of tests 
you don't need but it makes it much easier to maintain because, for the most 
part, you just have to copy over any updates from the master copy.

I am successfully using the latter approach to develop some (hopefully 
reusable) library infrastructure out of the GHC infrastructure (i.e., both 
the configure scripts and the makefiles).  Thanks to Simon Marlow's help and 
willingness to make some changes to the ghc scripts, this is going pretty 
well at the moment.  I have to do a bit more tweaking of the infrastructure 
and some more testing before I commit all my changes but I could give you 
what I have so far.  [I also have to tweak the ghc infrastructure to support 
building with nhc and with Hugs.  I haven't started on that yet.]

--
Alastair Reid