On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 07:23:52 -0500
Nate Bargmann <n0nb@???> wrote:


>
> A lot of software is built using GNU Autotools. It is a very
> extensive system that has a very steep learning curve in proportion
> with its power. The GNU documentation serves more as a reference
> manual than a HOWTO, however, one site I found very useful was the
> Autotools Myth Buster:
>
> https://autotools.io/index.html
>
> More packages are using Cmake, but unless the package you're
> interested in is using it, you can safely avoid its details for now.
> Also, if you're developing in Qt you'll need to be familiar with
> Qmake. These are just the more frequently found alternatives to the
> Autotools. The alternative is writing Makefiles by hand.

What Nate said. And I'd like to add one more thing: The less your
program depends on other software or libraries, and the less you make
it sensitive to little nuances in the software environment, the more
able you are to simply make;make install, or even cc -Wall -o myprog
myprog.c;sudo cp myprog /usr/local/bin.

Last year, all of us found out in a most unpleasant manner that
dependencies have costs. So when some clown criticizes you for
"reinventing the wheel" after you wrote 100 lines of code to do what
you could have done with an extra library and 10 lines of glue code,
solemnly nod in agreement and turn around so he can't see you laughing
at him.

SteveT

Steve Litt
June 2015 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key