First try

This first implementation will illustrate the bootstrap issue mentioned in the previous section (see Built sources).

Here is a tentative Makefile.am.

# This won't work.
bin_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_SOURCES = foo.c
nodist_foo_SOURCES = bindir.h
CLEANFILES = bindir.h
bindir.h: Makefile
        echo '#define bindir "$(bindir)"' >$@

This setup doesn’t work, because Automake doesn’t know that foo.c includes bindir.h. Remember, automatic dependency tracking works as a side-effect of compilation, so the dependencies of foo.o will be known only after foo.o has been compiled (see Automatic dependency tracking). The symptom is as follows.

% make
source='foo.c' object='foo.o' libtool=no \
depfile='.deps/foo.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/foo.TPo' \
depmode=gcc /bin/sh ./depcomp \
gcc -I. -I. -g -O2 -c `test -f 'foo.c' || echo './'`foo.c
foo.c:2: bindir.h: No such file or directory
make: *** [foo.o] Error 1

In this example bindir.h is not distributed, not installed, and it is not even being built on-time. One may wonder what the nodist_foo_SOURCES = bindir.h line has any use at all. This line simply states that bindir.h is a source of foo, so for instance it should be inspected while generating tags (see Interfacing to etags). In other words, it does not help our present problem, and the build would fail identically without it.

Using BUILT_SOURCES

A solution is to require bindir.h to be built before anything else. This is what BUILT_SOURCES is meant for (see Built sources).

bin_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_SOURCES = foo.c
nodist_foo_SOURCES = bindir.h
BUILT_SOURCES = bindir.h
CLEANFILES = bindir.h
bindir.h: Makefile
        echo '#define bindir "$(bindir)"' >$@

See how bindir.h get built first:

% make
echo '#define bindir "/usr/local/bin"' >bindir.h
make  all-am
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/adl/tmp'
source='foo.c' object='foo.o' libtool=no \
depfile='.deps/foo.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/foo.TPo' \
depmode=gcc /bin/sh ./depcomp \
gcc -I. -I. -g -O2 -c `test -f 'foo.c' || echo './'`foo.c
gcc  -g -O2   -o foo  foo.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/adl/tmp'

However, as said earlier, BUILT_SOURCES applies only to the all, check, and install targets. It still fails if you try to run make foo explicitly:

% make clean
test -z "bindir.h" || rm -f bindir.h
test -z "foo" || rm -f foo
rm -f *.o
% : > .deps/foo.Po # Suppress previously recorded dependencies
% make foo
source='foo.c' object='foo.o' libtool=no \
depfile='.deps/foo.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/foo.TPo' \
depmode=gcc /bin/sh ./depcomp \
gcc -I. -I. -g -O2 -c `test -f 'foo.c' || echo './'`foo.c
foo.c:2: bindir.h: No such file or directory
make: *** [foo.o] Error 1

Recording dependencies manually

Usually people are happy enough with BUILT_SOURCES because they never build targets such as make foo before make all, as in the previous example. However if this matters to you, you can avoid BUILT_SOURCES and record such dependencies explicitly in the Makefile.am.

bin_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_SOURCES = foo.c
nodist_foo_SOURCES = bindir.h
foo.$(OBJEXT): bindir.h
CLEANFILES = bindir.h
bindir.h: Makefile
        echo '#define bindir "$(bindir)"' >$@

You don’t have to list all the dependencies of foo.o explicitly, only those which might need to be built. If a dependency already exists, it will not hinder the first compilation and will be recorded by the normal dependency tracking code. (Note that after this first compilation the dependency tracking code will also have recorded the dependency between foo.o and bindir.h; so our explicit dependency is really useful to the first build only.)

Adding explicit dependencies like this can be a bit dangerous if you are not careful enough. This is due to the way Automake tries not to overwrite your rules (it assumes you know better than it). foo.$(OBJEXT): bindir.h supersedes any rule Automake may want to output to build foo.$(OBJEXT). It happens to work in this case because Automake doesn’t have to output any foo.$(OBJEXT): target: it relies on a suffix rule instead (i.e., .c.$(OBJEXT):). Always check the generated Makefile.in if you do this.

Build bindir.h from configure

It’s possible to define this preprocessor macro from configure, either in config.h (see Defining Directories in The Autoconf Manual), or by processing a bindir.h.in file using AC_CONFIG_FILES (see Configuration Actions in The Autoconf Manual).

At this point it should be clear that building bindir.h from configure work well for this example. bindir.h will exist before you build any target, hence will not cause any dependency issue.

The Makefile can be shrunk as follows. We do not even have to mention bindir.h.

bin_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_SOURCES = foo.c

However, it’s not always possible to build sources from configure, especially when these sources are generated by a tool that needs to be built first...

Build bindir.c, not bindir.h.

Another attractive idea is to define bindir as a variable or function exported from bindir.o, and build bindir.c instead of bindir.h.

noinst_PROGRAMS = foo
foo_SOURCES = foo.c bindir.h
nodist_foo_SOURCES = bindir.c
CLEANFILES = bindir.c
bindir.c: Makefile
        echo 'const char bindir[] = "$(bindir)";' >$ 

bindir.h contains just the variable’s declaration and doesn’t need to be built, so it won’t cause any trouble. bindir.o is always dependent on bindir.c, so bindir.c will get built first.

Which is best?

There is no panacea, of course. Each solution has its merits and drawbacks.

You cannot use BUILT_SOURCES if the ability to run make foo on a clean tree is important to you.

You won’t add explicit dependencies if you are leery of overriding an Automake rule by mistake.

Building files from ./configure is not always possible, neither is converting .h files into .c files.