automake: Auxiliary Programs

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1 3.7 Programs automake might require
1 ===================================
1 
1 Automake sometimes requires helper programs so that the generated
1 ‘Makefile’ can do its work properly.  There are a fairly large number of
1 them, and we list them here.
1 
1    Although all of these files are distributed and installed with
1 Automake, a couple of them are maintained separately.  The Automake
1 copies are updated before each release, but we mention the original
1 source in case you need more recent versions.
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1 ‘ar-lib’
1      This is a wrapper primarily for the Microsoft lib archiver, to make
1      it more POSIX-like.
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1 ‘compile’
1      This is a wrapper for compilers that do not accept options ‘-c’ and
1      ‘-o’ at the same time.  It is only used when absolutely required.
1      Such compilers are rare, with the Microsoft C/C++ Compiler as the
1      most notable exception.  This wrapper also makes the following
1      common options available for that compiler, while performing file
1      name translation where needed: ‘-I’, ‘-L’, ‘-l’, ‘-Wl,’ and
1      ‘-Xlinker’.
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1 ‘config.guess’
1 ‘config.sub’
1      These two programs compute the canonical triplets for the given
1      build, host, or target architecture.  These programs are updated
1      regularly to support new architectures and fix probes broken by
1      changes in new kernel versions.  Each new release of Automake comes
1      with up-to-date copies of these programs.  If your copy of Automake
1      is getting old, you are encouraged to fetch the latest versions of
1      these files from <https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=config>
1      before making a release.
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1 ‘depcomp’
1      This program understands how to run a compiler so that it will
1      generate not only the desired output but also dependency
1      information that is then used by the automatic dependency tracking
1      feature (⇒Dependencies).
1 
1 ‘install-sh’
1      This is a replacement for the ‘install’ program that works on
1      platforms where ‘install’ is unavailable or unusable.
1 
1 ‘mdate-sh’
1      This script is used to generate a ‘version.texi’ file.  It examines
1      a file and prints some date information about it.
1 
1 ‘missing’
1      This wraps a number of programs that are typically only required by
1      maintainers.  If the program in question doesn’t exist, or seems to
1      old, ‘missing’ will print an informative warning before failing
1      out, to provide the user with more context and information.
1 
1 ‘mkinstalldirs’
1      This script used to be a wrapper around ‘mkdir -p’, which is not
1      portable.  Now we prefer to use ‘install-sh -d’ when ‘configure’
1      finds that ‘mkdir -p’ does not work, this makes one less script to
1      distribute.
1 
1      For backward compatibility ‘mkinstalldirs’ is still used and
1      distributed when ‘automake’ finds it in a package.  But it is no
1      longer installed automatically, and it should be safe to remove it.
1 
1 ‘py-compile’
1      This is used to byte-compile Python scripts.
1 
1 ‘test-driver’
1      This implements the default test driver offered by the parallel
1      testsuite harness.
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1 ‘texinfo.tex’
1      Not a program, this file is required for ‘make dvi’, ‘make ps’ and
1      ‘make pdf’ to work when Texinfo sources are in the package.  The
1      latest version can be downloaded from
1      <https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/>.
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1 ‘ylwrap’
1      This program wraps ‘lex’ and ‘yacc’ to rename their output files.
1      It also ensures that, for instance, multiple ‘yacc’ instances can
1      be invoked in a single directory in parallel.
1