automake: List of Automake options
1
1 17.2 List of Automake options
1 =============================
1
1 ‘gnits’
1 ‘gnu’
1 ‘foreign’
1
1 Set the strictness as appropriate. The ‘gnits’ option also implies
1 options ‘readme-alpha’ and ‘check-news’.
1
1 ‘check-news’
1 Cause ‘make dist’ to fail unless the current version number appears
1 in the first few lines of the ‘NEWS’ file.
1
1 ‘dejagnu’
11 Cause ‘dejagnu’-specific rules to be generated. ⇒DejaGnu
Tests.
1
1 ‘dist-bzip2’
1 Hook ‘dist-bzip2’ to ‘dist’.
1
1 ‘dist-lzip’
1 Hook ‘dist-lzip’ to ‘dist’.
1
1 ‘dist-xz’
1 Hook ‘dist-xz’ to ‘dist’.
1
1 ‘dist-zip’
1 Hook ‘dist-zip’ to ‘dist’.
1
1 ‘dist-shar’
1 Hook ‘dist-shar’ to ‘dist’. Use of this option is deprecated, as
1 the ‘shar’ format is obsolescent and problematic. Support for it
1 will be removed altogether in Automake 2.0.
1
1 ‘dist-tarZ’
1 Hook ‘dist-tarZ’ to ‘dist’. Use of this option is deprecated, as
1 the ‘compress’ program is obsolete. Support for it will be removed
1 altogether in Automake 2.0.
1
1 ‘filename-length-max=99’
1 Abort if file names longer than 99 characters are found during
1 ‘make dist’. Such long file names are generally considered not to
1 be portable in tarballs. See the ‘tar-v7’ and ‘tar-ustar’ options
1 below. This option should be used in the top-level ‘Makefile.am’
1 or as an argument of ‘AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE’ in ‘configure.ac’, it will
1 be ignored otherwise. It will also be ignored in sub-packages of
1 nested packages (⇒Subpackages).
1
1 ‘info-in-builddir’
1 Instruct Automake to place the generated ‘.info’ files in the
1 ‘builddir’ rather than in the ‘srcdir’. Note that this might make
1 VPATH builds with some non-GNU make implementations more brittle.
1
1 ‘no-define’
1 This option is meaningful only when passed as an argument to
1 ‘AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE’. It will prevent the ‘PACKAGE’ and ‘VERSION’
1 variables from being ‘AC_DEFINE’d. But notice that they will
1 remain defined as shell variables in the generated ‘configure’, and
1 as make variables in the generated ‘Makefile’; this is deliberate,
1 and required for backward compatibility.
1
1 ‘no-dependencies’
1 This is similar to using ‘--ignore-deps’ on the command line, but
1 is useful for those situations where you don’t have the necessary
11 bits to make automatic dependency tracking work (⇒
Dependencies). In this case the effect is to effectively disable
1 automatic dependency tracking.
1
1 ‘no-dist’
1 Don’t emit any code related to ‘dist’ target. This is useful when
1 a package has its own method for making distributions.
1
1 ‘no-dist-gzip’
1 Do not hook ‘dist-gzip’ to ‘dist’.
1
1 ‘no-exeext’
1 If your ‘Makefile.am’ defines a rule for target ‘foo’, it will
1 override a rule for a target named ‘foo$(EXEEXT)’. This is
1 necessary when ‘EXEEXT’ is found to be empty. However, by default
1 ‘automake’ will generate an error for this use. The ‘no-exeext’
1 option will disable this error. This is intended for use only
1 where it is known in advance that the package will not be ported to
1 Windows, or any other operating system using extensions on
1 executables.
1
1 ‘no-installinfo’
1 The generated ‘Makefile.in’ will not cause info pages to be built
1 or installed by default. However, ‘info’ and ‘install-info’
1 targets will still be available. This option is disallowed at
1 ‘gnu’ strictness and above.
1
1 ‘no-installman’
1 The generated ‘Makefile.in’ will not cause man pages to be
1 installed by default. However, an ‘install-man’ target will still
1 be available for optional installation. This option is disallowed
1 at ‘gnu’ strictness and above.
1
1 ‘nostdinc’
1 This option can be used to disable the standard ‘-I’ options that
1 are ordinarily automatically provided by Automake.
1
1 ‘no-texinfo.tex’
1 Don’t require ‘texinfo.tex’, even if there are texinfo files in
1 this directory.
1
1 ‘serial-tests’
11 Enable the older serial test suite harness for ‘TESTS’ (⇒
Serial Test Harness, for more information).
1
1 ‘parallel-tests’
1 Enable test suite harness for ‘TESTS’ that can run tests in
1 parallel (⇒Parallel Test Harness, for more information).
1 This option is only kept for backward-compatibility, since the
1 parallel test harness is the default now.
1
1 ‘readme-alpha’
1 If this release is an alpha release, and the file ‘README-alpha’
1 exists, then it will be added to the distribution. If this option
1 is given, version numbers are expected to follow one of two forms.
1 The first form is ‘MAJOR.MINOR.ALPHA’, where each element is a
1 number; the final period and number should be left off for
1 non-alpha releases. The second form is ‘MAJOR.MINORALPHA’, where
1 ALPHA is a letter; it should be omitted for non-alpha releases.
1
1 ‘std-options’
1
1 Make the ‘installcheck’ rule check that installed scripts and
1 programs support the ‘--help’ and ‘--version’ options. This also
1 provides a basic check that the program’s run-time dependencies are
1 satisfied after installation.
1
1 In a few situations, programs (or scripts) have to be exempted from
1 this test. For instance, ‘false’ (from GNU coreutils) is never
1 successful, even for ‘--help’ or ‘--version’. You can list such
1 programs in the variable ‘AM_INSTALLCHECK_STD_OPTIONS_EXEMPT’.
1 Programs (not scripts) listed in this variable should be suffixed
1 by ‘$(EXEEXT)’ for the sake of Windows or OS/2. For instance,
1 suppose we build ‘false’ as a program but ‘true.sh’ as a script,
1 and that neither of them support ‘--help’ or ‘--version’:
1
1 AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = std-options
1 bin_PROGRAMS = false ...
1 bin_SCRIPTS = true.sh ...
1 AM_INSTALLCHECK_STD_OPTIONS_EXEMPT = false$(EXEEXT) true.sh
1
1 ‘subdir-objects’
1 If this option is specified, then objects are placed into the
1 subdirectory of the build directory corresponding to the
1 subdirectory of the source file. For instance, if the source file
1 is ‘subdir/file.cxx’, then the output file would be
1 ‘subdir/file.o’.
1
1 ‘tar-v7’
1 ‘tar-ustar’
1 ‘tar-pax’
1
1 These three mutually exclusive options select the tar format to use
1 when generating tarballs with ‘make dist’. (The tar file created
1 is then compressed according to the set of ‘no-dist-gzip’,
1 ‘dist-bzip2’, ‘dist-lzip’, ‘dist-xz’ and ‘dist-tarZ’ options in
1 use.)
1
1 These options must be passed as arguments to ‘AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE’
1 (⇒Macros) because they can require additional configure
1 checks. Automake will complain if it sees such options in an
1 ‘AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS’ variable.
1
1 ‘tar-v7’ selects the old V7 tar format. This is the historical
1 default. This antiquated format is understood by all tar
1 implementations and supports file names with up to 99 characters.
1 When given longer file names some tar implementations will diagnose
1 the problem while other will generate broken tarballs or use
1 non-portable extensions. Furthermore, the V7 format cannot store
1 empty directories. When using this format, consider using the
1 ‘filename-length-max=99’ option to catch file names too long.
1
1 ‘tar-ustar’ selects the ustar format defined by POSIX 1003.1-1988.
1 This format is old enough to be portable: As of 2018, it is
1 supported by the native ‘tar’ command on GNU, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
1 OpenBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, at least. It fully supports empty
1 directories. It can store file names with up to 256 characters,
1 provided that the file name can be split at directory separator in
1 two parts, first of them being at most 155 bytes long. So, in most
1 cases the maximum file name length will be shorter than 256
1 characters.
1
1 ‘tar-pax’ selects the new pax interchange format defined by POSIX
1 1003.1-2001. It does not limit the length of file names. However,
1 this format is very young and should probably be restricted to
1 packages that target only very modern platforms. As of 2018, this
1 format is supported by the native ‘tar’ command only on GNU,
1 FreeBSD, OpenBSD system; it is not supported by the native ‘tar’
1 command on NetBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris. There are moves to change
1 the pax format in an upward-compatible way, so this option may
1 refer to a more recent version in the future.
1
1 ⇒Controlling the Archive Format (tar)Formats, for further
1 discussion about tar formats.
1
1 ‘configure’ knows several ways to construct these formats. It will
1 not abort if it cannot find a tool up to the task (so that the
1 package can still be built), but ‘make dist’ will fail.
1
1 VERSION
1 A version number (e.g., ‘0.30’) can be specified. If Automake is
1 not newer than the version specified, creation of the ‘Makefile.in’
1 will be suppressed.
1
1 ‘-WCATEGORY’ or ‘--warnings=CATEGORY’
1 These options behave exactly like their command-line counterpart
1 (⇒automake Invocation). This allows you to enable or
1 disable some warning categories on a per-file basis. You can also
1 setup some warnings for your entire project; for instance, try
1 ‘AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([-Wall])’ in your ‘configure.ac’.
1
1 Unrecognized options are diagnosed by ‘automake’.
1
1 If you want an option to apply to all the files in the tree, you can
1 use the ‘AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE’ macro in ‘configure.ac’. ⇒Macros.
1