Building c++ project in Ubuntu Linux with Makefile.am/Makefile.in

Question

I am new in Ubuntu/Linux and I've been working with java using the NetBeans IDE, so I don't have much experience with building c++ projects. But now I have to provide a proof of concept and I need to connect a C++ client with my ActiveMQ server. I downloaded The ActiveMQ-CPP API from this link , but I can't build/run it.

The download came with the files: Maklefile.am and Makefile.in. I searched it and I found that I need automake/autoconf to build it. I tried running ./configure but it says that it couldn't find such file or directory. I tried

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install automake
sudo apt-get install autoconf

and a lot of other commands that I found on the Internet. None of then worked. I know that this question is really basic and it seems to be already answered somewhere else, but every attempt I've made failed. I think I'm missing something. I even tried the solution provided in the last message in this topic but it didn't work either.

Can anyone help me install autoconf/automake, or tell me how to use Makefile.am / Makefile.in to build the project I downloaded, or even suggest me some other way of building it?

Answer 1

Since you're open to other methods of building your project, I'm going to suggest CMake. It is a far better build system than autotools (at least from where I stand).

#CMakeLists.txt
project(MyProject CXX)
set_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
add_executable(foobar foo.cpp bar.cpp)

That example will build an executable called "foobar" by compiling and linking foo.cpp and bar.cpp. Put the above code in a file called CMakeLists.txt, then run the following commands:

cmake <path to project> #run in the folder you want to build in
make #this does the actual work

The really cool thing about CMake is that it generates a build system (Makefiles by default) but you can use it to generate project files for Eclipse, a Visual Studio solution, and a bunch of other things. If you want more information, I'd check out their documentation .

Answer 2

The "configure" script should be in your ActiveMQ-cpp source directory. From the Linux command line, you should be able to:

1) "cd" into your ActiveMQ* directory

2) "ls -l" to see the "configure" script

3) "./configure" to set things up for building the library\\

4) "make" to actually build the library

Answer 3

This is mentioned in comments, but this particular point of confusion has been common for well over a decade and I think needs to be clarified as often as possible. The entire point of the autotools is to generate a build system that will build on a system using only the standard tools (make, ac compiler, sh, and few others.) Unfortunately, many developers release tarballs that do not build cleanly. If you unpack the tarball and it does not contain a configure script, or if the configure script is broken, that is a bug in the package. The solution is absolutely not to install autoconf/automake/libtool and try to produce a working configure script. The solution is to report the build error as a bug to the package maintainer.

The world would be a better place if Linux distributions stopped installing multiple versions of the autotools by default as less than .002% of the population needs those tools, and anyone who actually needs to have the tools should be capable of installing it themselves. Anyone incapable of acquiring and installing the tools has no business using them.