Installation Script for simple c++ command-line tool, tutorial?

I'm working on a simple command line tool in c++. Half as a fun learning-process thing, and half to distribute to friends/colleagues 开发者_开发知识库etc.

I assume the easiest way to make it distributable is just packaging the source code with an installation script---can anyone point me to a good tutorial for setting that up? In other words, what must a script include to compile the program, put the files in good places*, and make it executable from any directory from the command line?

• • E.g. I know the compiled binary should go in /usr/local/bin/ , but if I'm writing-to and accessing a text file (for instance), where should that go? What about a file that stores settings/configuration-parameters?

I'm on mac osx, so that would be the starting point, but portability to windows, linux, etc would be great.

You can use CMake to make a cross platform build system, and you can use it's CPack (Wiki here) feature in order to generate binary only packages. First you create a build script that runs and installs on each platform (which CMake makes as easy as can be expected). You then run CPack to generate a package which just includes your binaries.

There is a good tutorial that covers the basic cmake process (including install commands) here.

CMake is generally considered simpler then autoconf (and has better windows support), but each has it's own strengths.

Do not assume that the user installing the program has root access. Prompt, or provide a command-line option, like --install-prefix=/home/user/apps, to specify where to install.

I HATE programs that install shit in /usr/local. If you do that, you'd best wrap it up in an .rpm or .deb or whatever the platform package is so that your app can be cleanly uninstalled.

I would suggest checking out autoconf