automake: The Types of Distributions

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1 14.5 The Types of Distributions
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1 Automake generates rules to provide archives of the project for
1 distributions in various formats.  Their targets are:
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1 ‘dist-gzip’
1      Generate a ‘gzip’ tar archive of the distribution.  This is the
1      only format enabled by default.
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1 ‘dist-bzip2’
1      Generate a ‘bzip2’ tar archive of the distribution.  bzip2 archives
1      are frequently smaller than gzipped archives.  By default, this
1      rule makes ‘bzip2’ use a compression option of ‘-9’.  To make it
1      use a different one, set the ‘BZIP2’ environment variable.  For
1      example, ‘make dist-bzip2 BZIP2=-7’.
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1 ‘dist-lzip’
1      Generate an ‘lzip’ tar archive of the distribution.  ‘lzip’
1      archives are frequently smaller than ‘bzip2’-compressed archives.
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1 ‘dist-xz’
1      Generate an ‘xz’ tar archive of the distribution.  ‘xz’ archives
1      are frequently smaller than ‘bzip2’-compressed archives.  By
1      default, this rule makes ‘xz’ use a compression option of ‘-e’.  To
1      make it use a different one, set the ‘XZ_OPT’ environment variable.
1      For example, run this command to use the default compression ratio,
1      but with a progress indicator: ‘make dist-xz XZ_OPT=-ve’.
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1 ‘dist-zip’
1      Generate a ‘zip’ archive of the distribution.
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1 ‘dist-tarZ’
1      Generate a tar archive of the distribution, compressed with the
1      historical (and obsolescent) program ‘compress’.  This option is
1      deprecated, and it and the corresponding functionality will be
1      removed altogether in Automake 2.0.
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1 ‘dist-shar’
1      Generate a ‘shar’ archive of the distribution.  This format archive
1      is obsolescent, and use of this option is deprecated.  It and the
1      corresponding functionality will be removed altogether in Automake
1      2.0.
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1    The rule ‘dist’ (and its historical synonym ‘dist-all’) will create
1 archives in all the enabled formats (⇒List of Automake options
1 for how to change this list).  By default, only the ‘dist-gzip’ target
1 is hooked to ‘dist’.
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