Which files of an autoconf project to put into .gitignore?

Question

We have the ctemplate library included in our git-managed project which is based on GNU Autoconf.

I would like to put everything which is generated by Autoconf into the .gitignore file to avoid conflicts if someone accidentally commits his platform-specific generated files.

Can someone tell me how to figure out the complete list of files autoconf generates/modifies for all platforms (Mac, Ubuntu, CentOS, etc.)?

Tetradymite

Not an answer to the downvote question - wasn't me... but, it seems pretty trivial to 1) start with the files you wrote and commit them, 2) run autoconf and look at what files exist now - anything new was generated by autoconf - add those to .gitignore... – Tombstone

This might work for your local machine but autoconf can also generate stuff only on specific platforms. – Tetradymite

Don't give commit privileges to anyone who would commit autotools-generated files :-P – Wives

adding ref to list : github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Autotools.gitignore – Carmarthenshire

Answer 1

Here is what I have in my various .gitignore (on Debian testing):

Shared library: (libtool)

/Makefile
/Makefile.in
/aclocal.m4
/autom4te.cache/
/config.*
/configure
/depcomp
/install-sh
/libtool
/ltmain.sh
/m4/
/missing
/stamp-h?
.deps/
.dirstamp
.libs/
*.l[ao]
*~

Executable:

/Makefile
/Makefile.in
/aclocal.m4
/autom4te.cache/
/config.*
/configure
/m4/
/stamp-h?
.deps/
.dirstamp
*.o
*~

You may want to adapt this a bit, but this is the bulk of it. make dist-clean followed by commit, rebuild, and finally git status may show you new files though, depending on what exactly your build generates.

Halfwit

hm, seems some of the files inside the m4/ directory are needed. I get configure.ac:65: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_COMPILER_CHARACTERISTICS – Tetradymite

Are you using autoreconf --install first? I do, and it regenerates the m4 directory. – Halfwit

I'd work from a make maintainer-clean rather than distclean. – Wallraff

+1, but *~ and *.o should probably be globally ignored (eg, in ~/.gitconfig:[core]) – Bijection

For the bleeding edge, you might want to add ar-lib to this list. – Forsythe