autoconf not generating makefile?

Question

I am currently trying to create an installation package, using autoconf to generate the configure file. I have successfully managed to auto generate these, however, when I run ./configure, no makefile is generated from Makefile.in.

My question is : how do I debug this issue in order to narrow down why it is failing?

The following is the error message I get when attempting to generate the Makefile :

configure: error: cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool 

Answer 1

I had the same problem when I upgraded autotools version, in my case the configure.ac file was missing the following line:

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.9 foreign])

(Insert whatever version or options you need)

Then run autoreconf --install.

To answer the question about debugging: I went and looked at similar configure.ac files and worked through the differences until the error went way.

Answer 2

First of all, check that configure.ac contains something like:

AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT

Otherwise it won't create the makefile for you.

If it's not that, config.log should have clues about what's going wrong.