Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool: The easy primaries

  - | ## 7.3 The easy primaries This section describes the common primaries that are relatively easy to understand; the more complicated ones are discussed in the next section. `DATA` This is the easiest primary to understand. A macro of this type lists a number of files which are installed verbatim. These files can appear either in the source directory or the build directory. `HEADERS` Macros of this type list header files. These are separate from `DATA` macros because this allows for extra error checking in some cases. `SCRIPTS` This is used for executable scripts (interpreted programs). These are different from `DATA` because they are installed with different permissions and because they have the program name transform applied to them (e.g., the ``--program-transform-name'` argument to `configure`). Scripts are also different from compiled programs because the latter can be stripped while scripts cannot. `MANS` This lists man pages. Installing man pages is more complicated than you might think due to the lack of a single common practice. One developer might name a man page in the source tree ``foo.man'` and then rename to the real name (``foo.1'`) at install time. Another developer might instead use numeric suffixes in the source tree and install using the same name. Sometimes an alphabetic code follows the numeric suffix (e.g., ``quux.3n'`); this code must be stripped before determining the correct install directory (this file must still be installed in ``$(man3dir)'`). Automake supports all of these modes of operation: `man_MANS` can be used when numeric suffixes are already in place:
        man_MANS = foo.1 bar.2 quux.3n
  - `man1_MANS`, `man2_MANS`, etc., can be used to force renaming at install time. This renaming is skipped if the suffix already begins with the correct number. For instance:
        man1_MANS = foo.man
        man3_MANS = quux.3n
Here ``foo.man'` will be installed as ``foo.1'` but ``quux.3n'` will keep its name at install time. `TEXINFOS` GNU programs traditionally use the Texinfo documentation format, not man pages. Automake has full support for Texinfo, including some additional features such as versioning and `install-info` support. We won't go into that here except to mention that it exists. See the Automake reference manual for more information. Automake supports a variety of lesser-used primaries such as `JAVA` and `LISP` (and, in the next major release, `PYTHON`). See the reference manual for more information on these.

This document was generated by Gary V. Vaughan on February, 8 2006 using texi2html