project.conf — Project definition files for configure
A project definition file should be found in every project directory managed
by configure. These files must be named project.conf
.
A definition file is organized in sections, each containing a number of variables. Section names are written on their own line, between square brackets (e.g. "[section]"). Variables are given on their own line too, like this:
variable=value
Configuration files may be commented, comment lines being prepended with a hash sign "#".
Variables can be defined directly without specifying a particular section first; they belong then to the default section, which is simply considered to have an empty name.
The most significant variables recognized are mentioned below.
In the default section:
subdirs
: subdirectories to look for
too
cppflags_force
: CPPFLAGS to force
globally
cppflags
: optional global
CPPFLAGS
cflags_force
: CFLAGS to force
globally
cflags
: optional global
CFLAGS
ldflags_force
: LDFLAGS to force
globally
ldflags
: optional global
LDFLAGS
targets
: targets to handle in the
Makefile
dist
: additional files to include in a
source archive
In subsequent sections, respectively named after the target they define:
type
(mandatory): type of the target (eg
binary, library,
object, ...)
cppflags
: additional CPPFLAGS for this
target
cflags
: additional CFLAGS for this
target
ldflags
: additional LDFLAGS for this
target
sources
: source files to
compile
depends
: a list of files (or other
targets) that this target depends on
install
: the destination path for
installation
phony
: determines if the target defined
should always be built, regardless of the presence of a file of a same
name (possible values: 0, 1)
enabled
: set to 0 to not build this
target by default
The following target types are currently supported:
binary: produces binary files, linked from every object file produced with their source files.
library: produces a static and a shared version of the target, linked from every object file produced with their source files, and respectively appending ".a" and ".so" extensions to the target name; the shared object are also assigned a version number.
libtool: uses the libtool project to generate libraries, as supported by the project on the underlying platform.
object: produces a binary object file from the given source.
plugin: produces a shared version of the target, linked from every object file produced with their source files, and appending the ".so" extension to the target name.
script: runs the given script, expecting the target file to be generated from the sources defined.
Scripts should be provided by the software project itself, as configure does not provide a convenient set of pre-installed standard scripts. A few sample scripts are, however, distributed along with the source code of the configure project, and introduced here.
These scripts are primarily meant to allow further integration of the build process, as defined by the Makefiles generated, with the requirements of a software project beyond that of compiling code. configure provides support through these scripts for:
AppBroker: integration with the DeforaOS distributed
computing framework (see
appbroker.sh
)
DocBook:
markup language for technical documentation, based on either SGML or XML
(see docbook.sh
)
GCOV: code
coverage analysis and profiling tool, part of the GNU Compiler Collection
suite (see coverage.sh
)
Gettext:
internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) framework, notably
allowing software to be easily translated to other languages (see
gettext.sh
)
Gtk-doc:
generates API documentation from comments within software projects, in
the format expected by the DevHelp API browser (see
gtkdoc.sh
)
pkg-config: unified
interface to define compilation and linking rules to installed software
(see pkgconfig.sh
)
syntax checkers: convenience scripts for a number of
programming languages and markup formats are provided, such as C (see
clint.sh
), HTML (see
htmllint.sh
), PHP (see
phplint.sh
), Python PEP-8 (see
pylint.sh
), POSIX shell scripts (see
shlint.sh
), or XML (see
xmllint.sh
)