= autotools =

== Description ==

This package contains a recent version of Texinfo, GNU m4, and help2man.
It contains the git repository of autoconf, automake and libtool.

For the latter 3 packages (commonly referred to as "autotools"),
many different versions are installed, by checking out the versions
from the git repo and building/installing them separately. Since the
complete git repository is shipped in the spkg, this does not require
internet access.

For Texinfo, m4 and help2man, just one version is installed. These are
prerequisites for autotools. Moreover, Texinfo is often needed for
bootstrapping packages. Even though m4 is already a prerequisite of
Sage, autoconf requires an up-to-date version of GNU m4.

The package makes wrapper scripts in $SAGE_LOCAL/bin for the various
autotools, which call the "correct" version. This means that, if a file
"configure" already exists in the current directory, the same autoconf
version is run which created the original file. Otherwise, the latest
version is run. The goal of all this is to make it easier to patch
configure.ac or Makefile.am files inside a spkg. By using the same
version of autotools as originally used, the patch files should be
relatively small. The environment variables AUTOCONF_VERSION,
AUTOMAKE_VERSION and LIBTOOL_VERSION can be used to override the
chosen version.

== License ==

GNU General Public License version 3 or later.

== Upstream Contact ==

* http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
* http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
* http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/
* http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
* http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
* http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/

== Dependencies ==

To install the package:
* Perl
* Git

To update the package:
* Sage with autotools package installed
* Internet access

== Special Update/Build Instructions ==

The file spkg-src can be used to automatically create the upstream
tarball from the git repositories. This obviously requires internet
access.

The file version-list defines the list of versions installed by this
spkg. If you edit this, you must update Makefile.build using the
spkg-write-makefile script. After optionally updating the git repos
using spkg-src, you need to run
  ./spkg-write-makefile >Makefile.build
This must be run in a Sage shell, with the the autotools spkg
installed.
