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/.

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=/mingw
$ make
$ make 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)

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).