GNU Automake Reviews & Product Details

I like that it provides a single tool to configure make systems across multiple platforms. It can be a real chore to get the variables setup to work right across different *nix flavors, let alone 32bit vs 64 bit and big vs little endian machines. This does all that for you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If your system doesn't work with autoconfigure it can take a fair amount of knowledge about your platform to get all the issues sorted out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Open source software is important to me. When automating the process of building software, I consider it critical from a security/software integrity standpoint. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Of course being open software, it is hard to get support on non-free operating systems like the latest version of Windows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a Free Software Foundation Member and programmer with lots of experience I can say that Automake is the best software besides Emacs that GNU has to offer. the make commands are so easy to use and the autogenerated .make files make it all the better Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Automake is hard to use if you don't have documentation on how to use it or have the documentation for the program you are compiling. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

automake has a template system to build on numerous target systems. It is used for many *nix system components to build on a variety of distros and even target operating systems. It is a mature build system with widespread adoption. I would recommend it for new packages, especially in C. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

automake is not relevant to code in modern languages like python and go which have new ecosystems to distribute their packages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is free and is part of the GNU license which is nice. Also, it is able to provide single tools to configure make systems across many different platforms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Your own personal system may not work too well with it unless you have a ton of knowledge about it and how to figure it out on your own. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best thing about this tool is - it is free and part of GNU license. So it can be easily included as part of any project where makefiles need to generated - e.g. using utilities like configure (running ./configure that checks for various dependencies and finally generates the makefile depending on the system architecture. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Automake is not backward compatible i.e a project created with automake 1.2 will not work with automake 1.3 - so in such cases we may have to include automake versions or always use latest common version of automake for all projects Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Make and Makefiles are the historical build system for Unix. Because it is open to any build tool, it is still a relevant standard today. However, to much boilerplate is needed, and Automake, a translator for extended Makefiles, takes care of this. Since it's an extended Makefile, whenever needed, writing regular Make recipes works. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

On Windows, until recently, it's not simple to use Make, hence Automake is (was?) not to adequate for project targeting Windows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the tool as its easy to automate the compilation process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dont have anything to say I dislike as I am still learning to use the tool Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The speed and ease of preparing software for compiling and installing cannot be beat. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes it complains about missing dependencies that are not required for the compiled program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Simplifies writing Makefiles in higher-level language rather than writing everything manually. Automatically takes care of all dependencies. When a source is modified it automatically recompiles it when next time automake is invoked. It automatically resolves large number of targets to be built for which is tedious with plain makefiles Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

having static paths breaks cross-compilation ability.Steep learning curve.It Does not fit well for Windows OS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.