Autotools

The Instantiating Macros

Before we dive into the details of AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, I'd like to spend a little time on the file generation framework Autoconf provides. From a high-level perspective, there are four major things happening in configure.ac:

• Initialization

• Check request processing

• File instantiation request processing

• Generation of the configure script

We've covered initialization—there's not much to it, although there are a few more macros you should be aware of. Check out the GNU Autoconf Manual for more information—look up AC_COPYRIGHT, for an example. Now let's move on to file instantiation.

There are actually four so-called instantiating macros: AC_CONFIG_FILES, AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS, and AC_CONFIG_LINKS. An instantiating ...