I wanted to know why autoconf and automake (auto tools) are used to Build the Gstreamer(and odes like gstramer). These I suppose are used to generate the Makefiles which then can be used by simply running make command. What are makefile.am and configure.ac files .
Rgds, Softy
Makefile.am is an Automake script shorthand for writing makefiles. It's processed by Automake to generate Makefile.in. It's easier to use Automake language to specify dependencies and standard targets required by the GNU Build System.Makefile.in is a makefile that is missing platform-dependent code. See below.configure.ac is a file, written in the M4 macro language. It is processed by Autoconf to generate a shell script called configure. It is much easier and less error-prone to write configure.ac than writing a 200k shell script.configure is a shell script that checks whether your platform supports all sorts of portable and nonportable features. It generates a whole bunch of files. It can also put platform-dependent and system-dependent code into files (usually ending with *.in), transforming them into the same file without the .in extension. Specifically, it generates Makefile from Makefile.in.The flow diagram on this Wikipedia page may be helpful.
