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'.
This document was generated
by system on December, 2 2004
using texi2html