Rating: 
Summary: An unorganized mess
Review: ... I bought this book with the hope that random shunks of information that I already knew would be pieced together in a coherent story, based on a good foundation. Unfortunately, I found this book to be a complete unorganized mess, totally lacking a logical structure. The number of references to later chapters for essential information are just impossible to count. Concepts are suddenly used without any explanation. For me, this looked like a book written by an expert for other experts. Two stars because it is the only one available about the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: for those who dread makefiles....
Review: ... this is your lifeline. I sit here, staring at a messy Makefile.am and let me tell you, the future is looking pretty bleak. Imagine the rainiest day, the most miserably cold weather, the most awful meal you've had to eat and say tasted great: for some, the pain of dealing with cross platform Makefiles is exponentially worse. I thank all the authors of this book every time I try to do something impossible within the constraints of GNU make syntax. This book clearly explains Makefile syntax. Then, it explains how to automate it all with GNU autotools. Then, it provides a bunch more information. I think this book is clear and well-informed, and I find myself turning to it instead of the on-line manuals. (Note, this book is available on line as well, for free. Buy it anyway.) Some of the details may be lost on people not doing serious, cross platform Unix development, but the read is still highly recommended. For those still think mulletts are cool, writing Z80 asm is "fun," that women and cooties are inseperable, and that real programmers write their own damn Makefiles, I offer my sincerest sympathies. The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second step is getting this book. Godspeed.
Rating:
Summary: If you write software for Linux (unix)....
Review: ...get this book! If you have ever downloaded some Linux / Unix source code and wanted to understand just what the "configure" script and makefiles do --- get this book!! More to the point, if you want to distribute your source code and allow users to compile it on many different systems, this book offers you a step by step understanding of what needs to be done to make that happen. I got this book because I was looking to 'cross-compile' some programs. (That is, compile a program on one machine but run it on another) Thanks to the intelligent layout - I was able to get the program compiled and going in a couple of hours. One caveat, this is not for the 'newbie' or faint-at-heart. You will need to at least understand the concepts of compilers, linkers, libraries, etc. in order to comprehend this book. However, you don't have to be a programming-guru. I think that even administrators will get alot out of this book. Particularly, helping them understand how to set the options needed to get pesky software installed. Overall, a *very* good book!
Rating:
Summary: Totally disorganized, though interesting here and there
Review: As a guide to Gnu autoconf, automake and libtool, this book is quite useless. It is utterly and totally disorganized, and much essential information is just not there at all. So don't bother with it if you want to learn about any of those subjects. The book is not entirely without merit, however. Its redeeming features are scattered sensible comments about software portability and software architecture. The authors are obviously very knowledgable and experienced about software. I encourage them to "throw this one away" and try a rewrite from scratch. Short of that, they could provide a road map through their book; first read this chapter, then skip to the second half of that one, etc. The sad news is that there may not be any good guide to autoconf etc anywhere yet. Like the DNA in your body, all autoconf files are very likely descended by an evolutionary process from a few original specimens.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this book even if you do not know what it is about!
Review: Finally, there is a nice book on GNU configure stuff. If you ever intend to develop cross-platform UNIX applications, buy this book. Buy it even if you do not know what the book is all about. It will make you a more disciplined UNIX software developer.
Rating:
Summary: This book is too out of date to use.
Review: First off, the book is very non-linear and very disorganized. The subject material is extremely difficult and non-linear, so this was probably a very difficult book to write, and I sympathize with the authors. I couldn't have done a better job. However, as of Nov 2003, the versions of autoconf, automake and libtool that the book uses are very out of date and very deprecated. It's not a matter of "some things have changed", it's a matter of "they're completely different". The main ideas and concepts remain the same, but as for the details... you will NOT be able to use autoconf / automake / libtool after reading the book. You'll be floundering in "did I do something wrong or is this just because I'm using a newer version?". Do not buy this book until the authors update it. You will NOT learn the subject material and will be very sorry you spent the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the GNU Manuals
Review: I found this book _very_ poorly organized. As one reviewer mentioned, it continually refers to later chapters. After being perplexed by this book, I read the freely available manuals and got a much better understanding. I give it one star because I like the cover.
Rating:
Summary: Read the GNU Manuals
Review: I had originally bought this book so that I could maintain a GNU autotools based build system for a company I was doing CM for at the time. I was basically a kid, and didn't have any professional C development background, and after reading the first several chapters, I was thinking to myself "This book is unnecessairly hard to understand, I just want to know how to use autoconf, show me a listing of the macros, etc, not this other, preipheral sic shell stuff!" Months later, and after doing some actual Linux C development myself (a command interpreter, no less), I came back to this book, and was able to get a lot more out of it. Just be aware that it is geared toward someone doing really involved open-source/GPL'd C development. This book may have been better if each feature of the autotools were discussed in a more abstract way, without following the development of this sic shell. It is interesting, but that kind of orginisation forces you to read it from front to end to effectively understand it, which of course you SHOULD do, but it's at the expense of being a solid reference. It's no biggie, though, because the free GNU documentation fills that gap.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book, if you meet the prerequisites
Review: I had originally bought this book so that I could maintain a GNU autotools based build system for a company I was doing CM for at the time. I was basically a kid, and didn't have any professional C development background, and after reading the first several chapters, I was thinking to myself "This book is unnecessairly hard to understand, I just want to know how to use autoconf, show me a listing of the macros, etc, not this other, preipheral sic shell stuff!" Months later, and after doing some actual Linux C development myself (a command interpreter, no less), I came back to this book, and was able to get a lot more out of it. Just be aware that it is geared toward someone doing really involved open-source/GPL'd C development. This book may have been better if each feature of the autotools were discussed in a more abstract way, without following the development of this sic shell. It is interesting, but that kind of orginisation forces you to read it from front to end to effectively understand it, which of course you SHOULD do, but it's at the expense of being a solid reference. It's no biggie, though, because the free GNU documentation fills that gap.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I totally agree with the reviewer: if you want to do some development in Open Source Project, this book will build a solid base for you. For one example, PHP4 is a very popular server side scripting language and it uses all these great tools to make build process straightforward. Cheers!
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