The autoscan program can help you create and/or maintain a configure.ac file for a software package. autoscan examines source files in the directory tree rooted at a directory given as a command line argument, or the current directory if none is given. It searches the source files for common portability problems and creates a file configure.scan which is a preliminary configure.ac for that package, and checks a possibly existing configure.ac for completeness.
When using autoscan to create a configure.ac, you
should manually examine configure.scan before renaming it to
configure.ac; it probably needs some adjustments.
Occasionally, autoscan outputs a macro in the wrong order
relative to another macro, so that autoconf produces a warning;
you need to move such macros manually. Also, if you want the package to
use a configuration header file, you must add a call to
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS (see Configuration Headers). You might
also have to change or add some #if directives to your program in
order to make it work with Autoconf (see ifnames Invocation, for
information about a program that can help with that job).
When using autoscan to maintain a configure.ac, simply consider adding its suggestions. The file autoscan.log contains detailed information on why a macro is requested.
autoscan uses several data files (installed along with Autoconf) to determine which macros to output when it finds particular symbols in a package's source files. These data files all have the same format: each line consists of a symbol, one or more blanks, and the Autoconf macro to output if that symbol is encountered. Lines starting with ‘#’ are comments.
autoscan accepts the following options: