Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. General ideas

2.1 General Operation
2.2 Strictness
2.3 The Uniform Naming Scheme
2.4 How derived variables are named
2.5 Variables reserved for the user
2.6 Programs automake might require

3. Some example packages

3.1 A simple example, start to finish
3.2 A classic program
3.3 Building true and false

4. Creating a `Makefile.in'
5. Scanning `configure.in'

5.1 Configuration requirements
5.2 Other things Automake recognizes
5.3 Auto-generating aclocal.m4
5.4 aclocal options
5.5 Macro search path

5.5.1 Modifying the macro search path: --acdir
5.5.2 Modifying the macro search path: -I dir
5.5.3 Modifying the macro search path: `dirlist'

5.6 Autoconf macros supplied with Automake

5.6.1 Public macros
5.6.2 Private macros

5.7 Writing your own aclocal macros

6. The top-level `Makefile.am'

6.1 Recursing subdirectories
6.2 Conditional subdirectories

6.2.1 Conditional subdirectories with AM_CONDITIONAL
6.2.2 Conditional subdirectories with AC_SUBST
6.2.3 How DIST_SUBDIRS is used

7. An Alternative Approach to Subdirectories
8. Rebuilding Makefiles
9. Building Programs and Libraries

9.1 Building a program

9.1.1 Defining program sources
9.1.2 Linking the program
9.1.3 Conditional compilation of sources

9.1.3.1 Conditional compilation using _LDADD substitutions
9.1.3.2 Conditional compilation using Automake conditionals

9.1.4 Conditional compilation of programs

9.2 Building a library
9.3 Building a Shared Library
9.4 Program and Library Variables
9.5 Special handling for LIBOBJS and ALLOCA
9.6 Variables used when building a program
9.7 Yacc and Lex support
9.8 C++ Support
9.9 Assembly Support
9.10 Fortran 77 Support

9.10.1 Preprocessing Fortran 77
9.10.2 Compiling Fortran 77 Files
9.10.3 Mixing Fortran 77 With C and C++

9.10.3.1 How the Linker is Chosen

9.10.4 Fortran 77 and Autoconf

9.11 Java Support
9.12 Support for Other Languages
9.13 Automatic de-ANSI-fication
9.14 Automatic dependency tracking
9.15 Support for executable extensions

10. Other Derived Objects

10.1 Executable Scripts
10.2 Header files
10.3 Architecture-independent data files
10.4 Built sources

10.4.1 Built sources example
First try
Using BUILT_SOURCES
Recording dependencies manually
Build `bindir.h' from `configure'
Build `bindir.c', not `bindir.h'.
Which is best?

11. Other GNU Tools

11.1 Emacs Lisp
11.2 Gettext
11.3 Libtool
11.4 Java
11.5 Python

12. Building documentation

12.1 Texinfo
12.2 Man pages

13. What Gets Installed

13.1 Basics of installation
13.2 The two parts of install
13.3 Extending installation
13.4 Staged installs
13.5 Rules for the user

14. What Gets Cleaned
15. What Goes in a Distribution

15.1 Basics of distribution
15.2 Fine-grained distribution control
15.3 The dist hook
15.4 Checking the distribution
15.5 The types of distributions

16. Support for test suites

16.1 Simple Tests
16.2 DejaGNU Tests
16.3 Install Tests

17. Changing Automake's Behavior
18. Miscellaneous Rules

18.1 Interfacing to etags
18.2 Handling new file extensions
18.3 Support for Multilibs

19. Include
20. Conditionals
21. The effect of --gnu and --gnits
22. The effect of --cygnus
23. When Automake Isn't Enough
24. Distributing `Makefile.in's
25. Automake API versioning
Macro and Variable Index
General Index