Autotools
Important
Some of the features used in this section are still under development, while they are recommended and usable and we will try not to break them in future releases, some breaking changes might still happen if necessary to prepare for the Conan 2.0 release.
Available since: 1.35.0
The Autotools
build helper is a wrapper around the command line invocation of autotools. It will abstract the
calls like ./configure
or make
into Python method calls.
The Autotools
helper can be used like:
from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.gnu import Autotools
class App(ConanFile):
settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"
def build(self):
autotools = Autotools(self)
autotools.configure()
autotools.make()
It will read the conanbuild.conf
file generated by the AutotoolsToolchain
to know what arguments to use when calling the configure and make scripts:
configure_args: Arguments to call the
configure
script.make_args: Arguments to call the
make
script.
Methods
constructor
def __init__(self, conanfile, namespace=None):
conanfile: the current recipe object. Always use
self
.namespace: this argument avoids collisions when you have multiple toolchain calls in the same recipe. By setting this argument, the conanbuild.conf file used to pass information to the toolchain will be named as: <namespace>_conanbuild.conf. The default value is
None
meaning that the name of the generated file is conanbuild.conf. This namespace must be also set with the same value in the constructor of the AutotoolsToolchain so that it reads the information from the proper file.
configure(self, build_script_folder=None, args=None):
def configure(self, build_script_folder=None, args=None):
Call the configure script.
- build_script_folder (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): Subfolder where the configure script is located. If
None
,conanfile.source_folder
will be used.
- build_script_folder (Optional, Defaulted to
- args (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): List of arguments to use for the configure
call.
- args (Optional, Defaulted to
autoreconf(self, args=None):
def autoreconf(self, args=None)
Call the autoreconf
program.
- Parameters:
- args (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): List of arguments to use for the autoreconf
call.
- args (Optional, Defaulted to
make(self, target=None, args=None):
def make(self, target=None)
Call the make
program.
- Parameters:
target (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): Choose which target to build. This allows building of e.g., docs, shared libraries or install for some AutoTools projects.args (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): List of arguments to use for themake
call.
install(self, args=None, target=”install”):
def install(self, args=None, target="install")
This is just an “alias” of self.make(target="install")
- Parameters:
args (Optional, Defaulted to
None
): List of arguments to use for themake install
call. By default an argumentDESTDIR=unix_path(self, self.package_folder)
is added to the call if the passed value isNone
. See more information about tools.microsoft.unix_path() function.target (Optional, Defaulted to
install
): Target name to use when calling tomake <target>
.