Basics of developing and deploying a Linux application

Question

I am building an application that will run on a Linux system. Currently, the build process consists of a simple Makefile that is already far too complex.

Now I guess I am missing some basic understanding about how to properly develop a Linux application. Information I found is:

• The application should somehow have a make install target that moves all files to the right place.
• Usual places to install the application are /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.
• Data files should be placed in /usr/share or /usr/local/share respectively. One should be able to configure the path prefix somewhere in the build process.

Having this information, I am now wondering:

• How to configure the prefix properly: Should the build process take a path as parameter and hardcode that into the code? This also vital for testing - I should somehow be able to create a runnable binary that just uses the data files from the source folder without needing everything be installed somewhere.
• Should I use autotools or cmake or something? autotools at least seems to not just be a build system, but also handles prefix configuration and such. Is this correct? How does cmake compare?
• This is contract work, should I really care about these things? The application will only run on the customer's systems which are well-defined, so I could get away with supplying a folder that contains all necessary files, and the application could be executed from within that folder.

So I am basically looking for some good resources that give me an overview about the possibilities and common practice, and enable me to make an informed decision about whether and how to tweak the build and deployment process.

Answer 1

You normally have a ./configure script to run before making. This script is for checking dependancies. Setting compile time switches to project specific changes and so on. This is also the place to set the prefix, normally you should install to /usr/local if you give no prefix.

If you later on create packages (*.rpm, *.deb ...) for some distributions you normally use /usr/ as prefix there.

As it is insane to write a complete ./configure by hand, gnu autotools are used widely. They are a bit bloaty an some pain in the beginning, but do a really good job.

You could take a look at some tutorials like: http://markuskimius.wikidot.com/programming:tut:autotools/

I can tell nothing about cmake, as i have no experience with that.

Regarding your last question:

This is contract work, should I really care about these things? The application will only run on the customer's systems which are well-defined, so I could get away with supplying a folder that contains all necessary files, and the application could be executed from within that folder.

YES you should care about that. In case of updates and upgrading this will simplify your life.