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3.1.3 Generated Developer Files

The following files would be generated by the developer.

When using automake, these files are normally not generated manually after the first time. Instead, the generated `Makefile' contains rules to automatically rebuild the files as required. When `AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' is used in `configure.in' (the normal case in Cygnus code), the automatic rebuilding rules will only be defined if you configure using the `--enable-maintainer-mode' option.

When using automatic rebuilding, it is important to ensure that all the various tools have been built and installed on your `PATH'. Using automatic rebuilding is highly recommended, so much so that I'm not going to explain what you have to do if you don't use it.

`configure'
This is the configure script which will be run when building the package. This is generated by `autoconf' from `configure.in' and `aclocal.m4'. This is a shell script.

`Makefile.in'
This is the file which the configure script will turn into the `Makefile' at build time. This file is generated by `automake' from `Makefile.am'. If you aren't using automake, you must write this file yourself. This file is pretty much a normal `Makefile', with some configure substitutions for certain variables.

`aclocal.m4'
This file is created by the `aclocal' program, based on the contents of `configure.in' and `acinclude.m4' (or, as noted in the description of `acinclude.m4' above, on the contents of an `m4' subdirectory). This file contains definitions of autoconf macros which `autoconf' will use when generating the file `configure'. These autoconf macros may be defined by you in `acinclude.m4' or they may be defined by other packages such as automake, libtool or gettext. If you aren't using automake, you will normally write this file yourself; in that case, if `configure.in' uses only standard autoconf macros, this file will not be needed at all.

`config.in'
This file is created by `autoheader' based on `acconfig.h' and `configure.in'. At build time, the configure script will define some of the macros in it to create `config.h', which may then be included by your program. This permits your C code to use preprocessor conditionals to change its behaviour based on the characteristics of the host system. This file may also be called `config.h.in'.

`stamp.h-in'
This rather uninteresting file, which I omitted from the picture, is generated by `automake'. It always contains the string `timestamp'. It is used as a timestamp file indicating whether `config.in' is up to date. Using a timestamp file means that `config.in' can be marked as up to date without actually changing its modification time. This is useful since `config.in' depends upon `configure.in', but it is easy to change `configure.in' in a way which does not affect `config.in'.


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