Question

My end goal is to produce a simple .deb package.

For that I’ve read it’s better to provide 3 build phases in my build infrastructure of the project, rather than do it in the debian/ folder.

So first thing I need is a configure script, however I want the simplest configure script ever that just receives a “–prefix” argument and passes its value to the Makefile system (so the “install” target of the makefile can copy the files over to it).

Can I do this without using autoconf? I know autoconf is great but for the simplest configuration-phase ever I may not need it yet so badly.

Thanks

Answer 1

I ended up using this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
prefix=NONE
test "$prefix" = NONE && prefix=/usr/local

usage ()
{
    echo ""
    echo "Usage : configure [--prefix=PREFIX]"
    echo ""
}

while test x$1 != x; do
    case $1 in
        --prefix=*)
            prefix=`echo $1 | sed 's/--prefix=//'`
            ;;
        --prefix)
            shift
            prefix=$1
            ;;
        --help)
            usage
            exit
            ;;
        *)
            echo Warning: unknown argument $1 >&2
            usage
            ;;
    esac
    shift
done

echo -n "SUBDIRS = " > config.make

echo Configuration Summary
echo ---------------------
echo
echo "MyApp has been configured with "
echo "    prefix = $prefix"
echo
echo >> config.make
echo

echo -n  "prefix=$prefix" >> config.make

Then in the Makefile the first thing I need to do is:

top_srcdir=.
CONFIG_MAKE=$(top_srcdir)/config.make

-include $(top_srcdir)/config.make

I would be interested if there are better solutions than this.