Re: [ROOT] Makefiles and Dictionaries

From: Christian Holm Christensen (cholm@hehi03.nbi.dk)
Date: Tue Mar 27 2001 - 13:23:18 MEST


Hi Matt, 

On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 13:39:33 -0800
"Matthew D. Langston" <langston@SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote
concerning ": Re: [ROOT] Makefiles and Dictionaries":
> An example of how to use the GNU Autotools (automake, autoconf and libtool)
> with ROOT projects has also been available for several years at
> ftp://ftp.slac.stanford.edu/users/langston/root/misc/event-example-0.01.tar.
> gz.

Yes, I know of that example as well. In fact, I've used that for
inspirration - thanks. 

> I also submitted some updated examples, including a ROOT detection
> macro for Autoconf, earlier this year to roottalk: see
> http://root.cern.ch/root/roottalk/roottalk01/0009.html.

I did take a look at that macro, but it unfortunally depends on
ROOTSYS being set, which is bad 'cause it excludes people who use the
(upcomming) binary distribution packages from using your
macros. Ofcourse you could use the --with-rootsys option explicitly,
but that sort of defies the perpose. 

> Rene and Fons, maybe now that a few users are beginning to discover the GNU
> Autotools it would be useful to include at least my Autoconf m4 macros in
> the ROOT distribution.  

Well, as you probably noticed in my previous mail, there is already
such a file in the ROOT source tree, and it's use is documented in the 
root-config(1) man(1) page. It's largely based on your MDL_HAVE_ROOT
macro, but vastly simplified and changed to allow fixed installation
directories. Also, it uses the root-config script (as you saw in my
previous mail), so there's no need to play around with strange things
like load paths and so on. 

> It would allow users to use the MDL_HAVE_ROOT macro to find the ROOT
> headers and libraries instead of the root-config script, which may
> be more convenient when mixing ROOT with GNU Autoconf, Automake 
> and Libtool.

It's not really that much more convinient. It means that you have to
do a lot of work in you autotool macros - work that's already done in
root-config when you installed ROOT. So what I did was to make the
macro as simple as possible and exploit the root-config script. Now
that script could be expnaded to also have an option for the excuable
isntallation directory (option --bindir) that would return where the
rootcint program is installed. 

I should like to recommend that you use the AC_ROOT macro provided by
ROOT since that is supported by ROOT, always present, and works in any
configuration of the ROOT installation. 

If you believe that we should have more features, check, etc. in
AC_ROOT, let me know, and we can probably cook up something. 

Yours, 

Christian  -----------------------------------------------------------
Holm Christensen                             Phone:  (+45) 35 35 96 91 
  Sankt Hansgade 23, 1. th.                  Office: (+45) 353  25 305 
  DK-2200 Copenhagen N                       Web:    www.nbi.dk/~cholm    
  Denmark                                    Email:       cholm@nbi.dk
 



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