automake: Auxiliary Programs
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1 3.7 Programs automake might require
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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.
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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).
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1 ‘install-sh’
1 This is a replacement for the ‘install’ program that works on
1 platforms where ‘install’ is unavailable or unusable.
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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.
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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.
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1 ‘py-compile’
1 This is used to byte-compile Python scripts.
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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