As a developer it is often painful to continually update the
`Makefile.in' whenever the include-file dependencies change in a
project. automake supplies a way to automatically track
dependency changes, and distribute the dependencies in the generated
`Makefile.in'.
Currently this support requires the use of GNU make and
gcc. It might become possible in the future to supply a
different dependency generating program, if there is enough demand. In
the meantime, this mode is enabled by default if any C program or
library is defined in the current directory, so you may get a `Must
be a separator' error from non-GNU make.
When you decide to make a distribution, the dist target will
re-run automake with `--include-deps' and other options.
This will cause the previously generated dependencies to be inserted
into the generated `Makefile.in', and thus into the distribution.
This step also turns off inclusion of the dependency generation code, so
that those who download your distribution but don't use GNU make
and gcc will not get errors.
When added to the `Makefile.in', the dependencies have all
system-specific dependencies automatically removed. This can be done by
listing the files in `OMIT_DEPENDENCIES'.
For instance all references to system header files are removed by
automake. Sometimes it is useful to specify that a certain
header file should be removed. For instance if your `configure.in'
uses `AM_WITH_REGEX', then any dependency on `rx.h' or
`regex.h' should be removed, because the correct one cannot be
known until the user configures the package.
As it turns out, automake is actually smart enough to handle the
particular case of the regular expression header. It will also
automatically omit `libintl.h' if `AM_GNU_GETTEXT' is used.
Automatic dependency tracking can be suppressed by putting
no-dependencies in the variable AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS.
If you unpack a distribution made by make dist, and you want to
turn on the dependency-tracking code again, simply re-run
automake.
The actual dependency files are put under the build directory, in a subdirectory named `.deps'. These dependencies are machine specific. It is safe to delete them if you like; they will be automatically recreated during the next build.
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