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I have a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Php) application that I should release soon.
Even if I’ve never used it, I’m thinking about using autotools for it, to make the configuration and installation process easier (for the customer and for me, in the future).
Have you ever done (or thought) such a thing? Are there any drawbacks? Does it make a bit of sense?
Autotools is used mostly when you are trying to compile your programs for multiple target platforms. This applies for C code in general and checks stuff like available libs, size of data types, libc functions etc. So unless your program is written in C and you have a need for supporting all kinds of Unix flavors, dont bother with autotools.
If you are trying to build some kind of installation program for Linux, I suggest you look into rpmbuild (for redhat distros). Rpmbuild is easy to use if all you are doing is packaging files for easier distribution. A good tutorial is available here. One great aspect of rpmbuild is that you can specify requirements on the target system, for example: apache, mysql and even specific php-modules that you need.