Sometime ago I purchased
GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool by Vaughan, Elliston, Tromey, and Taylor. Sadly, this book's quality as an introduction to these tools is not good. The authors know the material extremely well, this works to their disadvantage as they frequently assume too much understanding on the part of the reader.
I'm in chapter 7 already, and the authors believe the reader has a functional knowledge of constructing
configure.in files far beyond the expected ability of a reader based on the examples provided in the text. They could have benefitted from a knowledgeable editor to guide them as the wrote. Instead, they offer us a wondering and tumultuous trail through the projects, neither completely demonstrating functionality nor the interactions possible between the tools. I guess I will have to dig through the
man and
info files after all.
To be fair, I'm only in chapter 7. If I manage to get a firmer grasp on these tools, there is pertinent information to be gleaned from this text. I'm looking forward to the chapter on configuring packages for compilation with cygwin... though these are advanced topics and I was interested in more of an introduction.
In short, this is a book aimed at users of the
Autoconf, automake, and libtool utilities who would like to expand their knowledge of these tools. It is not an introductory text in any sense - and certainly not worth the price for beginners.
