>> . It automatically generates all the necessary targets in the >> Makefile. > > Depends on your definition of "necessary".
The targets mandated by the GNU coding standard. >> . It ensures correct dependency handling. > > What does this mean? GCC tracked dependencies? They are trivial to > manage, without all the bloat and obfuscation of automake. Bad wording, sorry. I rather mean make dependencies of the various targets. A very convenient feature, for example, is the automatic regeneration of `configure', or the Makefile(s) in case you are changing something in `Makefile.am' or `configure.ac' and you simply call `make'. >> . Integration of gnulib is very, very simple with automake. > > Let's not go there. Personally, I consider gnulib to be grossly -- > and hideously -- over-engineered, and bloated by needless > dependencies. I think rather the opposite, considering it as a quite elegant means to circumvent portability issues. >> . It ensures that only the documented files become part of the >> tarball. > > Provided you've documented them accordingly, within Makefile.am; this > can also be achieved within Makefile.in, while avoiding the bloated > overhead of automake. Mhmm. With automake, I simply create a list of source code files, and the appropriate rules for `make dist', or `make install' are automatically generated. It is *not* trivial to ensure that all those targets are synchronized. And `Makefile.am' files can be *really* small. >> . In `gnits' mode, it takes care of a lot of distribution stuff >> that is very is easy to forget. > > For example? Checking the presence of the files `INSTALL', NEWS', etc. More details are in the `automake' documentation. Werner
