AUTOTOOLS.ECLASS

Section: eclass-manpages (5)
Updated: Oct 2025
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NAME

autotools.eclass - Regenerates auto* build scripts

DESCRIPTION

This eclass is for safely handling autotooled software packages that need to regenerate their build scripts. All functions will abort in case of errors.

SUPPORTED EAPIS

7 8

FUNCTIONS

eautoreconf: This function mimes the behavior of autoreconf, but uses the different eauto* functions to run the tools. It doesn't accept parameters, but the directory with include files can be specified with AT_M4DIR variable.
Should do a full autoreconf - normally what most people will be interested in. Also should handle additional directories specified by AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS.
eaclocal_amflags: Extract the ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS value from the Makefile.am and try to handle (most) of the crazy crap that people throw at us.
eaclocal: These functions runs the autotools using autotools_run_tool with the specified parameters. The name of the tool run is the same of the function without e prefix. They also force installing the support files for safety. Respects AT_M4DIR for additional directories to search for macros.
_elibtoolize: Runs libtoolize.
Note the '_' prefix: avoid collision with elibtoolize() from libtool.eclass.
eautoheader: Runs autoheader.
eautoconf: Runs autoconf.
eautomake: Runs automake.
eautopoint: Runs autopoint (from the gettext package).
config_rpath_update [destination]: Some packages utilize the config.rpath helper script, but don't use gettext directly. So we have to copy it in manually since we can't let `autopoint` do it for us.

ECLASS VARIABLES

WANT_AUTOCONF ?= latest (SET BEFORE INHERIT): The major version of autoconf your package needs
WANT_AUTOMAKE ?= latest (SET BEFORE INHERIT): The major version of automake your package needs
WANT_LIBTOOL ?= latest (SET BEFORE INHERIT): Do you want libtool? Valid values here are "latest" and "none".
AUTOTOOLS_DEPEND = " (GENERATED BY ECLASS): Contains the combination of requested automake/autoconf/libtool versions in *DEPEND format.
AUTOTOOLS_AUTO_DEPEND ?= yes (SET BEFORE INHERIT): Set to 'no' to disable automatically adding to DEPEND. This lets ebuilds form conditional depends by using ${AUTOTOOLS_DEPEND} in their own DEPEND string.
AM_OPTS: Additional options to pass to automake during eautoreconf call.
AT_NOEAUTOHEADER: Don't run eautoheader command if set to 'yes'; only used to work around packages that don't want their headers being modified.
AT_NOEAUTOMAKE: Don't run eautomake command if set to 'yes'; only used to workaround broken packages. Generally you should, instead, fix the package to not call AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE if it doesn't actually use automake.
AT_NOELIBTOOLIZE: Don't run elibtoolize command if set to 'yes', useful when elibtoolize needs to be ran with particular options
AT_M4DIR: Additional director(y|ies) aclocal should search

MAINTAINERS

[email protected]

REPORTING BUGS

Please report bugs via https://bugs.gentoo.org/

FILES

autotools.eclass

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 03:27:00 GMT, October 25, 2025