JohnLangford/vowpal_wabbit — pull request #25 by bmuller (2011-12-27 16:28:44+00:00)
Title: conversion to use autotools

Hey John,
I added everything necessary to use the autotools (i.e., "configure && make && make install"). A number of assumptions need no longer be made (for instance, where boost is installed, whether or not pthreads are supported, etc). Rather than receiving errors that aren't very clear, problems are detected at the "./configure" point and meaningful error messages are displayed. There are a ton of other benefits, for instance:

1. The version is no longer hardecoded, but is rather specified in configure.ac. When you run ./configure, this is set to a global variable in config.h and included in global_data.cc. There are other variables you might find useful as well in config.h
1. pthread and zlib support are checked at configure time rather than compile time.
1. You can now compile for parallelization / profiling based on configure options rather than having to edit the makefile.
1. There are additional boost options to give users more control at compile time (for instance, if boost is installed to a non-standard location, etc).
1. Users now have control over where binaries are installed (at configure time), etc.
1. And more...

Let me know if you have any questions or if there are any modifications you'd like.

Thanks for the project!

B