(*) I noticed Autoconfig and Automake make a lot of
symbolic links like COPYING, INSTALL, install-sh,
missing and mkinstalldirs. Why aren't these real
files?? I cannot make a tarball package with symbolic
links right???
no, you usually can make a tarball with copies of the files the
symbolic links point to. if your tar does not support it, invoke
automake with '-c' option. then these files are copied rather than
symlinked.
(*) I tried to add
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR(config)
to configure.in hoping it would *create* the directory
and put lots of junk there. Instead, Autotools complained
that this directory did not exist. Must I create this
directory myself and/or what?
yes, you guessed right. the config dir should contain the files
mentioned above (such as config.guess etc.), but usually it's not
necessary to set up a specific config dir, just let automake put the
configuration files in the toplevel srcdir.
(*) So what is the purpose of "mkinstalldirs", "install-sh"
and "missing"??? Am I expected to make these myself
always?
as i understand it (but i'm not an automake programmer), these scripts
are helpers called from the generated Makefiles. they take care of
proper installation etc. you don't have to write or install them
yourself, just invoke automake with the '--add-missing' (or '-a')
option, then these files are symlinked (or copied, see above) by
automake.
martin.