19 The effect of --gnu and --gnits
The ‘--gnu’ option (or ‘gnu’ in the ‘AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS’
variable) causes automake to check the following:
- The files INSTALL, NEWS, README, COPYING,
AUTHORS, and ChangeLog are required at the topmost
directory of the package.
- The options ‘no-installman’ and ‘no-installinfo’ are
prohibited.
Note that this option will be extended in the future to do even more
checking; it is advisable to be familiar with the precise requirements
of the GNU standards. Also, ‘--gnu’ can require certain
non-standard GNU programs to exist for use by various maintainer-only
targets; for instance in the future pathchk might be required for
‘make dist’.
The ‘--gnits’ option does everything that ‘--gnu’ does, and
checks the following as well:
- ‘make dist’ will check to make sure the NEWS file has been
updated to the current version.
- The file COPYING.LIB is prohibited. The LGPL is apparently
considered a failed experiment.
- ‘VERSION’ is checked to make sure its format complies with Gnits
standards.
-
If ‘VERSION’ indicates that this is an alpha release, and the file
README-alpha appears in the topmost directory of a package, then
it is included in the distribution. This is done in ‘--gnits’
mode, and no other, because this mode is the only one where version
number formats are constrained, and hence the only mode where Automake
can automatically determine whether README-alpha should be
included.
- The file THANKS is required.