Next: Building Programs and Libraries, Previous: Scanning configure.in, Up: GNU Automake [Index]
In non-flat packages, the top level Makefile.am must tell
Automake which subdirectories are to be built. This is done via the
SUBDIRS variable.
The SUBDIRS macro holds a list of subdirectories in which
building of various sorts can occur. Many targets (eg all) in
the generated Makefile will run both locally and in all specified
subdirectories. Note that the directories listed in SUBDIRS are
not required to contain Makefile.ams; only Makefiles
(after configuration). This allows inclusion of libraries from packages
which do not use Automake (such as gettext).
In a deep package, the top-level Makefile.am is often very short. For instance, here is the Makefile.am from the textutils distribution:
SUBDIRS = lib src doc man EXTRA_DIST = @README_ALPHA@
SUBDIRS can contain configure substitutions (eg ‘@DIRS@’);
Automake itself does not actually examine the contents of this variable.
If SUBDIRS is defined, then your configure.in must include
AC_PROG_MAKE_SET.