Building/Compiling source in ubuntu

Question

I have an open source repository in my Ubuntu development machine.

The issue is that I am not able to compile the source code.

I have tried ./configure and it failed. I could see that the directory does not have an executable configure.

On the other hand, the directory contains a configure.ac file.

Similarly the directory also contains a file Makefile.am.

Can somebody assist me in building the source code and generating a library out of it which can be used in other code.

Answer 1

These files are used with the Autotools suite. Makefile.am files are compiled to Makefiles using automake.

Here are the steps to compile the code:

1. Configure

   ./configure
   

If that had issues, then try:

autoreconf

2. builds (compile) the source code:

   make
   

3. and optionally, to install:

   sudo make install
   

(or su -c "make install")