building gnome 2.0 with autoconf-2.53 and automake-1.6

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

I have been attempting to build various gnome 2.0 modules with the 
recently released autoconf-2.53 and automake-1.6.  This included the 
core desktop components (nautilus, panel, control centre, etc) and a few 
other modules I am interested in (eg. glade, python bindings).  Overall, 
it has been fairly successful with only a few modules needing fixes 
(most trivial):

   * gtk+ - modified automake-1.5 compatibility hack to set CCAS and
     CCASFLAGS as well (used to compile gdk-pixbuf pixops).
   * libglade - fix up use of macro made private in autoconf-2.53
   * gnome-vfs - get rid of some superfluous semicolons that turned
     into syntax errors with new autoconfs
   * esound - use libtoolize to pull in libtool.  It was using a copy
     of libtool-1.2f that was checked in.  This old libtool caused
     problems with the automatic dependency generation code in newer
     automakes (both 1.5 and 1.6).
   * nautilus - same problem as gnome-vfs (superfluous semicolons
     causing syntax errors -- looked like a cut-n-paste).

I have checked thes fixes in, so gnome 2 can be built from CVS with 
newer tools.  Note that I have only tried building things.  More fixes 
are probably necessary to get everything to distcheck correctly (things 
that worked okay with automake-1.5 will most likely work okay).

This should make it easier for people to upgrade their auto* tools when 
they are ready.

Automake 1.6 is basically a bug fixed version of 1.5.  The reason it 
wasn't called 1.5.1 is that it now requires autoconf >= 2.52.  One nice 
feature of this release is that from 1.6 on, automake will be parallel 
installable (it installs its executables with a versioned suffix in 
addition to the normal names, and its data files are in versioned 
directories).  I don't know if they are planning on doing maintenance 
releases of 1.4 and 1.5 that will parallel install with 1.6 though.

One other nice feature is that you can set the DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS 
variable in your Makefile.am, which gives arguments to pass to configure 
when running "make distcheck".  This could be used to make sure things 
like API docs get built when making tarballs, while allowing you to 
leave doc building disabled during development (so you don't have to 
wait for jade while hacking).

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/