README.autoconf

This is for icbd developers only. It can be ignored if you're just
building the system.

Docs for the autoconf system can be found at any gnu mirror. The main
one is at www.gnu.org. Specifically, you can look at
https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/.

The autoconf files for the icbd were originally made around 1999 with
a much older version of autoconf. Therefore they contain some anacronisms
and may use some deprecated calls. Nonetheless, an attempt was made to
update them to autoconf 2.69 in May 2019.

If you add a check to the configure.in file, you'll need to run
autoreconf to have the configure script pick up the changes.

The configure script, when run, does three things:
1) It performs a variety of checks. Some of those checks will result
in internal variables being defined, and some will result in ifdef's.

2) ifdefs will get written out to a file called "config.h" in this
directory. All sources should #include this file.

3) The top level Makefile.in will get copied over to Makefile, and the
internal variables defined in step 1) will get substituted for @VARIABLE@.
e.g. if configure has determine that RANLIB is "ranlib" (see the 
AC_CHECK_PROG directive in configure.in), all instances of @RANLIB@ in
Makefile.in will get replaced with the string "ranlib". The same goes for
murgil/Makefile.in and server/Makefile.in.


If you need to run the configure process over again, be sure to remove
all the cached files. The easiest way to do this is to run "make distclean".


Michel Hoche-Mong
12 May 2000 (updated 23 May 2019)
hoche@grok.com