Question

Is there a way to set where autoconf generates the object files. I would like to have autoconf create all object files in a src/build/ instead of src/

I’ve tried setting VPATH but that doesn’t seem to do anything.
VPATH = build

Answer 1

You do this by running configure from the directory where you want the object files. For instance, if configure and all your code is in a directory named src, then starting from that directory, these commands should do what you want:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ../configure
$ make

If you’re not using Automake, you have to write your Makefile.in to handle this case; there are instructions for that in the autoconf manual.