Installing the GNU autotools on Windows
Perl
The GNU autotools require Perl. Download and install the MSYS version of Perl from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20perl/. You will also need libcrypt from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20crypt/.
You must use the MSYS version. You can not use ActiveState Perl or similar for this, because it interprets paths differently.
autoconf, automake and libtool
Download the correct versions of autoconf, automake and libtool:
| Package | Location | Version |
|---|---|---|
| autoconf | ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/autoconf/ | 2.61 or later |
| automake | ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/automake/ | Latest 1.9 and 1.10 |
| libtool | ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libtool/ | 2.2 or later |
Earlier versions than those listed may work, but these are the ones that were tested.
note: if you want / need to install automake 1.11 too, you will need autoconf 2.62 or later
Build them in the order in which they are listed in the table. In each case, after extracting, run the following commands:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr $ make all install
Do not build and install GNU make; it will not work in conjunction with MSYS (though it may work if you install a native Windows shell, such as the Interix / SFU ksh, and don't use MSYS at all)
Note that in MSYS, /usr is a symlink to /, but make install will fail if you try to build with –prefix=/.
When you install a particular version automake, it will install aclocal and automake but also aclocal-X.Y and automake-X.Y, so the last version you installed will be the default, but older versions are still available. Existing configure scripts and Makefiles will use whichever version was the default when they were generated.
pkg-config
pkg-config is not really part of the GNU autotools, but it might as well be…
There are no MinGW or MSYS binaries for pkg-config, and building it from source is non-trivial due to a circular dependency on glib (you need pkg-config to build glib). However, the Gnome project distribute Windows binaries of both glib and pkg-config, which you can download from http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html. They come in zip files, so you can just double-click them in Windows Explorer and copy the contents to your MinGW root (C:\MinGW).