Build

We use Autotools to build our code. Current we only make use of Autoconf, Autoheader, and Automake.

Autoconf

Autoconf is used to produce a configure script that will setup variables to be used by Autoheader and Automake. It will also fail at configure if libraries aren't found or certain C syntax constructs don't exist, etc.

configure.ac is used by Autoconf to produce the configure script

Autoheader

Autoheader reads configure.ac and produces config.h.in (which Autoconf will turn into config.h) which #defines lots of values for use in code

Automake

Automake reads configure.ac and Makefile.am and produces a Makefile.in (which Autoconf will turn into a Makefile). Automake will generate plenty of targets that we can use like:

make check
make dist
make distcheck

I won't elaborate on what these all do, look at the manual.