So let us position in ~/autohello.

The first thing to do is to call autoreconf, that will install necessary stuff and then run ./configure to perform configuration :

~/autohello$ autoreconf --install
configure.ac:28: installing './compile'
configure.ac:16: installing './install-sh'
configure.ac:16: installing './missing'
src/Makefile.am: installing './depcomp'
~/autohello$

~/autohello$ ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking whether gcc understands -c and -o together... yes
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking stdio.h usability... yes
checking stdio.h presence... yes
checking for stdio.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... (cached) yes
checking that generated files are newer than configure... done
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating src/Makefile
config.status: creating src/autohello-version.h
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: executing depfiles commands
~autohello$

Now after that configuration has been done, we can call make to compile the software, then run it.

~/autohello$ make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: entrant dans le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello »
Making all in src
make[2]: entrant dans le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..   -Wall -Werror -D_GNU_SOURCE  -g -O2 -MT autohello.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/autohello.Tpo -c -o autohello.o autohello.c
mv -f .deps/autohello.Tpo .deps/autohello.Po
gcc  -g -O2   -o autohello autohello.o  
make[2]: quittant le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
make[2]: entrant dans le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello »
make[2]: quittant le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello »
make[1]: quittant le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello »
~/autohello$ cd src
~/autohello/src$ ./autohello
Hello world version 1.0.0
~/autohello/src$

Now we can install the program and run the installed version :

~/autohello/src$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for cch: 
make[1]: entrant dans le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
test -z "/usr/local/bin" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/bin"
  /usr/bin/install -c autohello '/usr/local/bin'
make[1]: Rien à faire pour « install-data-am ».
make[1]: quittant le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
~/autohello/src$ autohello 
Hello world version 1.0.0
~/autohello/src$

Now that the program is OK, we can prepare its distribution through a standardized archive. We just have to call make dist-bzip2 and the archive is built by the top level Makefile.

~/autohello$ make dist-bzip2
if test -d "autohello-1.0.0"; then find "autohello-1.0.0" -type d ! -perm -200 -exec chmod u+w {} ';' && rm -rf "autohello-1.0.0" || { sleep 5 && rm -rf "autohello-1.0.0"; }; else :; fi
test -d "autohello-1.0.0" || mkdir "autohello-1.0.0"
 (cd src && make  top_distdir=../autohello-1.0.0 distdir=../autohello-1.0.0/src \
     am__remove_distdir=: am__skip_length_check=: am__skip_mode_fix=: distdir)
make[1]: entrant dans le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
make[1]: quittant le répertoire « /home/cch/autohello/src »
test -n "" \
    || find "autohello-1.0.0" -type d ! -perm -755 \
        -exec chmod u+rwx,go+rx {} \; -o \
      ! -type d ! -perm -444 -links 1 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
      ! -type d ! -perm -400 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
      ! -type d ! -perm -444 -exec /bin/sh /home/cch/autohello/install-sh -c -m a+r {} {} \; \
    || chmod -R a+r "autohello-1.0.0"
tardir=autohello-1.0.0 && ${TAR-tar} chof - "$tardir" | BZIP2=${BZIP2--9} bzip2 -c >autohello-1.0.0.tar.bz2
if test -d "autohello-1.0.0"; then find "autohello-1.0.0" -type d ! -perm -200 -exec chmod u+w {} ';' && rm -rf "autohello-1.0.0" || { sleep 5 && rm -rf "autohello-1.0.0"; }; else :; fi
~/autohello$  ls
aclocal.m4               config.h     config.status  depcomp     Makefile.am  src
autohello-1.0.0.tar.bz2  config.h.in  configure      install-sh  Makefile.in  stamp-h1
autom4te.cache           config.log   configure.ac   Makefile    missing
~/autohello$

If you want to try this tutorial, you can download the files : autohello 1.0.0 archive.

In the next article we will add configuration option and see what appends if we change one of the templates.