Previous: AC_LIBOBJ vs LIBOBJS, Up: Autoconf 2.13
AC_FOO_IFELSE
vs. AC_TRY_FOO
Since Autoconf 2.50, internal codes uses AC_PREPROC_IFELSE
,
AC_COMPILE_IFELSE
, AC_LINK_IFELSE
, and
AC_RUN_IFELSE
on one hand and AC_LANG_SOURCES
,
and AC_LANG_PROGRAM
on the other hand instead of the deprecated
AC_TRY_CPP
, AC_TRY_COMPILE
, AC_TRY_LINK
, and
AC_TRY_RUN
. The motivations where:
AC_TRY_COMPILE
etc. were double
quoting their arguments;
In addition to the change of syntax, the philosophy has changed too: while emphasis was put on speed at the expense of accuracy, today's Autoconf promotes accuracy of the testing framework at, ahem..., the expense of speed.
As a perfect example of what is not to be done, here is how to
find out whether a header file contains a particular declaration, such
as a typedef, a structure, a structure member, or a function. Use
AC_EGREP_HEADER
instead of running grep
directly on the
header file; on some systems the symbol might be defined in another
header file that the file you are checking includes.
As a (bad) example, here is how you should not check for C preprocessor
symbols, either defined by header files or predefined by the C
preprocessor: using AC_EGREP_CPP
:
AC_EGREP_CPP(yes, [#ifdef _AIX yes #endif ], is_aix=yes, is_aix=no)
The above example, properly written would (i) use
AC_LANG_PROGRAM
, and (ii) run the compiler:
AC_COMPILE_IFELSE([AC_LANG_PROGRAM( [[#ifndef _AIX error: This isn't AIX! #endif ]])], [is_aix=yes], [is_aix=no])