Since Automake is primarily intended to generate `Makefile.in's for use in GNU programs, it tries hard to interoperate with other GNU tools.
Automake provides some support for Emacs Lisp. The `LISP' primary
is used to hold a list of `.el' files. Possible prefixes for this
primary are `lisp_' and `noinst_'. Note that if
lisp_LISP is defined, then `configure.in' must run
AM_PATH_LISPDIR (see section Autoconf macros supplied with Automake).
By default Automake will byte-compile all Emacs Lisp source files using
the Emacs found by AM_PATH_LISPDIR. If you wish to avoid
byte-compiling, simply define the variable `ELCFILES' to be empty.
Byte-compiled Emacs Lisp files are not portable among all versions of
Emacs, so it makes sense to turn this off if you expect sites to have
more than one version of Emacs installed. Furthermore, many packages
don't actually benefit from byte-compilation. Still, we recommand that
you leave it enabled by default. It is probably better for sites with
strange setups to cope for themselves than to make the installation less
nice for everybody else.
If AM_GNU_GETTEXT is seen in `configure.in', then Automake
turns on support for GNU gettext, a message catalog system for
internationalization
(see section `GNU Gettext' in GNU gettext utilities).
The gettext support in Automake requires the addition of two
subdirectories to the package, `intl' and `po'. Automake
ensure that these directories exist and are mentioned in SUBDIRS.
Furthermore, Automake checks that the definition of `ALL_LINGUAS' in `configure.in' corresponds to all the valid `.po' files, and nothing more.
Automake provides some automatic support for writing Guile modules.
Automake will turn on Guile support if the AM_INIT_GUILE_MODULE
macro is used in `configure.in'.
Right now Guile support just means that the AM_INIT_GUILE_MODULE
macro is understood to mean:
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is run.
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR is run, with a path of `..'.
As the Guile module code matures, no doubt the Automake support will grow as well.
Automake provides support for GNU Libtool (see section `The Libtool Manual' in The Libtool Manual) with the `LTLIBRARIES' primary. See section Building a Shared Library.
Automake provides some minimal support for Java compilation with the `JAVA' primary.
Any `.java' files listed in a `_JAVA' variable will be
compiled with JAVAC at build time. By default, `.class'
files are not included in the distribution.
Currently Automake enforces the restriction that only one `_JAVA' primary can be used in a given `Makefile.am'. The reason for this restriction is that, in general, it isn't possible to know which `.class' files were generated from which `.java' files -- so it would be impossible to know which files to install where.
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