Invoking Autotools

To invoke the Autotools, a special sub-menu has been added to the project Context menu. Select any file in the project and then click on Invoke Autotools. There you will find a set of menu items to invoke the various Autotools for your project. The output of the tool invocation is presented in a special Autotools Console. Like the Configure and C-Build Consoles, the Autotools console is per-project and is not saved across Eclipse sessions. The console, if present, can be accessed via the "Display Selected Console" button in the Console View.

The tools provided are:

  1. Invoke Autoconf
  2. Invoke Automake
  3. Invoke Aclocal
  4. Invoke Autoheader
  5. Invoke Autoreconf
  6. Invoke Libtoolize


By default, the autotools are invoked simply by their names; expecting that the path has been set up appropriately. In some instances, you might want to specify a specific location for the autotools. For example, your project may require old versions of the tools which you have installed locally, but do not wish to be on your path. To set these for your project, select your project or a file/folder within it and go to Project -> Properties -> Autotools -> General and select the Tool Settings tab.