Using Anjuta

Click on File ▸ New ▸ Project. The new project assistant appears.
Click on Forward. The project selection page appears:

Figure 3-2 Project selection page
Select Generic (minimal) project in the C page.
Click on Forward.

Figure 3-3 Project basic information page

Change Project Name to tutprog, the project name should contains only alpha numeric characters or underscore. Fill the remaining field.
Click on Forward.

Figure 3-4 Project options page

Click on Destination and create a new directory named tutprog for your new project. You need to avoid space in the directory name. Then, keep all other options to their default value to get a minimal project.
Click on Forward.

Figure 3-5 Project summary page

This is the final page of the assistant, check that everything is right.
Click on Forward. Anjuta will create all needed files and directories, in the message window, you will see the following:

Figure 3-6 Project creation messages

Then, autogen.sh is called and run the configure script. Finally Anjuta open the new project. You can directly build the project, as the main source contains a few lines of C and configure has been run.

Example 3-4 Anjuta minimal configure.ac:

dnl Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure script.
dnl Created by Anjuta application wizard.

AC_INIT(tutprog, 0.1)

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(AC_PACKAGE_NAME, AC_PACKAGE_VERSION)
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h])

AC_PROG_CC

AC_OUTPUT([
Makefile
])

It is still quite simple with a bit more macros. Let's look at all unknown ones:

dnl: It is not a macros, just the marker to start a comment in M4, the language used to write configure.ac. It is like '#' is scripts or '//' in C++.
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE: The AC_INIT macro uses the new form with package and version but AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE keeps the old one. It is not needed anymore.
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS: This tells Autoconf to pass all defines in a file named config.h instead of using several -Dxxxx flags on the command line (see Section 3.1.4 ― Build project). It is easier when there are lots of them. A file named config.h.in is created automatically from the configure.ac using autoheader. Then config.h is created automatically like makefiles by configure. So it is painless for the developer.
AC_OUTPUT: This is the old form of the AC_OUTPUT, where you specify all output files instead of using AC_CONFIG_FILES.

Example 3-5 Anjuta minimal Makefile.am:

## Process this file with automake to produce Makefile.in
## Created by Anjuta

AM_CPPFLAGS = \
        -DPACKAGE_DATA_DIR=\""$(datadir)"\"

AM_CFLAGS =\
         -Wall\
         -g

bin_PROGRAMS = tutprog

tutprog_SOURCES = \
        main.c

tutprog_LDFLAGS =

tutprog_LDADD =

Not much things in the Makefile.am neither:

AM_CPPFLAGS: It is used to give additional flags to the C preprocessor. Here it defines an additional PACKAGE_DATA_DIR constant set by configure
AM_CFLAGS: It defines some additional flags for the C compiler: all warning and add debugging information that we have already seen at the beginning of this tutorial (see Section 2.1 ― Using GCC)
tutprog_LDFLAGS: It adds a places where you can put additional linker options for the tutprog program.
tutprog_LDADD: It adds a places where you can put additional libraries for the tutprog program.

Using Anjuta

3.2.1. Create a new project

3.2.2. Looking at configure.ac

3.2.3. Looking at Makefile.am

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