Configuration requirements

The one real requirement of Automake is that your configure.in call AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. This macro does several things which are required for proper Automake operation (see Macros).

Here are the other macros which Automake requires but which are not run by AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE:

AC_CONFIG_FILES

AC_OUTPUT

Automake uses these to determine which files to create (see Creating Output Files). A listed file is considered to be an Automake generated Makefile if there exists a file with the same name and the .am extension appended. Typically, AC_CONFIG_FILES([foo/Makefile]) will cause Automake to generate foo/Makefile.in if foo/Makefile.am exists.

These files are all removed by make distclean.