12.4.8 `Makefile.in' at top level

Here are a few modifications you need to make to your main, top-level `Makefile.in' file.

1. Add the following lines near the beginning of your `Makefile.in', so the `dist:' goal will work properly (as explained further down):

   PACKAGE = @PACKAGE@ VERSION = @VERSION@

2. Add file `ABOUT-NLS' to the DISTFILES definition, so the file gets distributed.

3. Wherever you process subdirectories in your `Makefile.in', be sure you also process dir subdirectories `intl' and `po'. Special rules in the `Makefiles' take care for the case where no internationalization is wanted.

   If you are using Makefiles, either generated by automake, or hand-written so they carefully follow the GNU coding standards, the effected goals for which the new subdirectories must be handled include `installdirs', `install', `uninstall', `clean', `distclean'.

   Here is an example of a canonical order of processing. In this example, we also define SUBDIRS in Makefile.in for it to be further used in the `dist:' goal.

   SUBDIRS = doc intl lib src po

   Note that you must arrange for `make' to descend into the intl directory before descending into other directories containing code which make use of the libintl.h header file. For this reason, here we mention intl before lib and src.

4. A delicate point is the `dist:' goal, as both `intl/Makefile' and `po/Makefile' will later assume that the proper directory has been set up from the main `Makefile'. Here is an example at what the `dist:' goal might look like:

   distdir = $(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION) dist: Makefile rm -fr $(distdir) mkdir $(distdir) chmod 777 $(distdir) for file in $(DISTFILES); do \ ln $$file $(distdir) 2>/dev/null || cp -p $$file $(distdir); \ done for subdir in $(SUBDIRS); do \ mkdir $(distdir)/$$subdir || exit 1; \ chmod 777 $(distdir)/$$subdir; \ (cd $$subdir && $(MAKE) $@) || exit 1; \ done tar chozf $(distdir).tar.gz $(distdir) rm -fr $(distdir)

Note that if you are using GNU automake, `Makefile.in' is automatically generated from `Makefile.am', and all needed changes to `Makefile.am' are already made by running `gettextize'.