Automake includes a number of Autoconf macros which can be used in
your package; some of them are actually required by Automake in certain
situations. These macros must be defined in your
aclocal.m4 ; otherwise they will not be seen by
autoconf .
The
aclocal program will automatically generate
aclocal.m4 files based on the contents of
configure.in . This provides a convenient way to get Automake-provided macros,
without having to search around. Also, the
aclocal mechanism is extensible for use by other packages.
At startup,
aclocal scans all the
.m4 files it can find, looking for macro definitions. Then it scans
configure.in . Any mention of one of the macros found in the first step causes that
macro, and any macros it in turn requires, to be put into
aclocal.m4 .
The contents of
acinclude.m4 , if it exists, are also automatically included in
aclocal.m4 . This is useful for incorporating local macros into
configure .
aclocal accepts the following options:
--acdir=DIR
Look for the macro files in DIR instead of the installation
directory. This is typically used for debugging.
--help
Print a summary of the command line options and exit.
-I DIR
Add the directory DIR to the list of directories searched for
.m4 files.
--output=FILE
Cause the output to be put into FILE instead of
aclocal.m4 .
--verbose
Print the names of the files it examines.
--version
Print the version number of Automake and exit.
SEE ALSO
automake(1) , and the Texinfo documentation for automake
AUTHORS
Automake was written primarily by David Mackenzie and Tom Tromey.
This manpage written by Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu> for the
Debian GNU/Linux
automake package.