Creating a snap using make or autotools

[Olivier Tilloy]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 7:55 AM, Luther Goh Lu Feng <elfgoh at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This probably isn't the right place to ask, but I thought I should ask in case it does matter in the context of snapping: when creating a snap of say, a hello world program in C[1], should I use the make or autotools plugin?
>
> Is one better than the other when it comes to snap creation?
>
> A quick visual scan of snappy playpen seems to indicate that more project use autotools than make, though I am unsure if the numbers are reflective of actual preferences. Appreciate if anyone can share more.
>
> Full disclosure: I am unfamiliar with both make and autotools. Thanks.
>
> [1] http://groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/c/hworld.html

Snapcraft supports both equally well, so it’s just a matter of
personal preference, really. If you’re snapping an upstream
application, then use whatever build system upstream provides. If
you’re authoring your application from scratch, use whatever you’re
more comfortable with. You’re not limited to make or autotools by the
way, there are more modern build systems available as snapcraft
plugins, such as SCons or CMake.
If you’re not familiar with either of those, you’ll need to pick one
and learn at least the very basics (for such a simple hello world kind
of example, the build files should be trivial with any decent build
system).

HTH,

 Olivier