automake: Standard Targets

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1 2.2.2 Standard ‘Makefile’ Targets
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1 So far we have come across four ways to run ‘make’ in the GNU Build
1 System: ‘make’, ‘make check’, ‘make install’, and ‘make installcheck’.
1 The words ‘check’, ‘install’, and ‘installcheck’, passed as arguments to
1 ‘make’, are called “targets”.  ‘make’ is a shorthand for ‘make all’,
1 ‘all’ being the default target in the GNU Build System.
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1    Here is a list of the most useful targets that the GNU Coding
1 Standards specify.
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1 ‘make all’
1      Build programs, libraries, documentation, etc. (same as ‘make’).
1 ‘make install’
1      Install what needs to be installed, copying the files from the
1      package’s tree to system-wide directories.
1 ‘make install-strip’
1      Same as ‘make install’, then strip debugging symbols.  Some users
1      like to trade space for useful bug reports...
1 ‘make uninstall’
1      The opposite of ‘make install’: erase the installed files.  (This
1      needs to be run from the same build tree that was installed.)
1 ‘make clean’
1      Erase from the build tree the files built by ‘make all’.
1 ‘make distclean’
1      Additionally erase anything ‘./configure’ created.
1 ‘make check’
1      Run the test suite, if any.
1 ‘make installcheck’
1      Check the installed programs or libraries, if supported.
1 ‘make dist’
1      Recreate ‘PACKAGE-VERSION.tar.gz’ from all the source files.
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