Automake

Flow diagram of autoconf and automake

Automake aims to allow the programmer to write a makefile in a higher-level language, rather than having to write the whole makefile manually. In simple cases, it suffices to give:

• A line that declares the name of the program to build
• A list of source files
• A list of command-line options to be passed to the compiler (for example, in which directories header files will be found)
• A list of command-line options to be passed to the linker (which libraries the program needs and in what directories they are to be found)

Automake also takes care of automatically generating the dependency information,[5] so that when a source file is modified, the next invocation of the make command will know which source files need to be recompiled. If the compiler allows it, Automake tries to make the dependency system dynamic: whenever a source file is compiled, that file's dependencies are updated by asking the compiler to regenerate the file's dependency list. In other words, dependency tracking is a side effect of the compilation process.

This attempts to avoid the problem with some static dependency systems, where the dependencies are detected only once when the programmer starts working on the project.[6] In such a case, if a source file gains a new dependency (e.g. if the programmer adds a new #include directive in a C source file), then a discrepancy is introduced between the real dependencies and those that are used by the compilation system. The programmer should then regenerate the dependencies, but runs the risk of forgetting to do so.

In the general case, automake generates dependencies via the bundled depcomp script, which will invoke the compiler appropriately or fall back to makedepend. If the compiler is a sufficiently recent version of gcc, however, automake will inline the dependency generation code to call gcc directly.

Automake is written in Perl and must be used with GNU Autoconf.[2] Automake contains the following commands:

• aclocal
• automake

aclocal, however, is a general-purpose program that can be useful to autoconf users. The GNU Compiler Collection, for example, uses aclocal even though its makefile is hand written.

Like Autoconf, Automake is not entirely backward compatible. For example, a project created with automake 1.13 will not necessarily work with automake 1.14.[7] This can require complex projects to include multiple versions.

• Configure (computing)
• Make (software)

• Official website
• Online version of The Goat Book aka Autobook
• Combined manual for Automake and Autoconf
• Autotoolset home page