3.14 Autoconf

Autoconf based applications can easily check whether GMP is installed. The only thing to be noted is that GMP library symbols from version 3 onwards have prefixes like __gmpz. The following therefore would be a simple test,

AC_CHECK_LIB(gmp, __gmpz_init)

This just uses the default AC_CHECK_LIB actions for found or not found, but an application that must have GMP would want to generate an error if not found. For example,

AC_CHECK_LIB(gmp, __gmpz_init, ,
  [AC_MSG_ERROR([GNU MP not found, see https://gmplib.org/])])

If functions added in some particular version of GMP are required, then one of those can be used when checking. For example mpz_mul_si was added in GMP 3.1,

AC_CHECK_LIB(gmp, __gmpz_mul_si, ,
  [AC_MSG_ERROR(
  [GNU MP not found, or not 3.1 or up, see https://gmplib.org/])])

An alternative would be to test the version number in ‘gmp.h’ using say AC_EGREP_CPP. That would make it possible to test the exact version, if some particular sub-minor release is known to be necessary.

In general it’s recommended that applications should simply demand a new enough GMP rather than trying to provide supplements for features not available in past versions.

Occasionally an application will need or want to know the size of a type at configuration or preprocessing time, not just with sizeof in the code. This can be done in the normal way with mp_limb_t etc, but GMP 4.0 or up is best for this, since prior versions needed certain ‘-D’ defines on systems using a long long limb. The following would suit Autoconf 2.50 or up,

AC_CHECK_SIZEOF(mp_limb_t, , [#include <gmp.h>])

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