AutoGen is configured and built using Libtool, Automake and Autoconf.
Consequently, you can install it wherever you wish using the ‘--prefix’
and other options. To the various configuration options supplied by these
tools, AutoGen adds a few of its own:
‘--disable-shell’
AutoGen is now capable of acting as a CGI forms server, See AutoGen CGI.
As such, it will gather its definitions using either ‘GET’ or
‘POST’ methods. All you need to do is have a template named
cgi.tpl handy or specify a different one with a command line
option.
However, doing this without disabling the server shell brings
considerable risk. If you were to pass user input to a script
that contained, say, the classic "‘`rm -rf /`’", you might have
a problem. This configuration option will cause shell template
commands to simply return the command string as the result.
No mistakes. Much safer. Strongly recommended.
The default is to have server shell scripting enabled.
Disabling the shell will have some build side effects, too.
Many of the make check tests will fail, since they assume
a working server shell.
The getdefs and columns programs are not built.
The options are distributed as definition files and they
cannot be expanded with a shell-disabled AutoGen.
Similarly, the documentation cannot be regenerated because
the documentation templates depend on subshell functionality.
‘--enable-debug’
Turning on AutoGen debugging enables very detailed inspection of
the input definitions and monitoring shell script processing.
These options are not particularly useful to anyone not directly
involved in maintaining AutoGen. If you do choose to enable AutoGen
debugging, be aware that the usage page was generated without these
options, so when the build process reaches the documentation rebuild,
there will be a failure. ‘cd’ into the agen5 build
directory, ‘make’ the ‘autogen.texi’ file and all will
be well thereafter.
‘--with-regex-header’
‘--with-header-path’
‘--with-regex-lib’
These three work together to specify how to compile with and link to a
particular POSIX regular expression library. The value for
--with-regex-header=value must be the name of the relevant header file.
The AutoGen sources will attempt to include that source with a
#include <value> C preprocessing statement. The path from the
--with-header-path=path will be added to CPPFLAGS as
-Ipath. The lib-specs from --with-regex-lib=lib-specs
will be added to LDFLAGS without any adornment.