What are Makefile.am and Makefile.in?

Makefile.am is a programmer-defined file and is used by automake to generate the Makefile.in file (the .am stands for automake). The configure script typically seen in source tarballs will use the Makefile.in to generate a Makefile.

The configure script itself is generated from a programmer-defined file named either configure.ac or configure.in (deprecated). I prefer .ac (for autoconf) since it differentiates it from the generated Makefile.in files and that way I can have rules such as make dist-clean which runs rm -f *.in. Since it is a generated file, it is not typically stored in a revision system such as Git, SVN, Mercurial or CVS, rather the .ac file would be.

Read more on GNU Autotools. Read about make and Makefile first, then learn about automake, autoconf, libtool, etc.

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Simple example

Shamelessly adapted from: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Creating-amhello.html and tested on Ubuntu 14.04 Automake 1.14.1.

Makefile.am

SUBDIRS = src
dist_doc_DATA = README.md

README.md

Some doc.

configure.ac

AC_INIT([automake_hello_world], [1.0], [bug-automake@gnu.org])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([-Wall -Werror foreign])
AC_PROG_CC
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h])
AC_CONFIG_FILES([
 Makefile
 src/Makefile
])
AC_OUTPUT

src/Makefile.am

bin_PROGRAMS = autotools_hello_world
autotools_hello_world_SOURCES = main.c

src/main.c

#include <config.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main (void) {
  puts ("Hello world from " PACKAGE_STRING);
  return 0;
}

Usage

autoreconf --install
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
sudo make install
autotools_hello_world
sudo make uninstall

This outputs:

Hello world from automake_hello_world 1.0

Notes

autoreconf --install generates several template files which should be tracked by Git, including Makefile.in. It only needs to be run the first time.

make install installs: the binary to /usr/local/bin README.md to /usr/local/share/doc/automake_hello_world

the binary to /usr/local/bin

README.md to /usr/local/share/doc/automake_hello_world

On GitHub for you to try it out.

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DEVELOPER runs autoconf and automake:

autoconf -- creates shippable configure script (which the installer will later run to make the Makefile)

‘autoconf’ is a macro processor.

It converts configure.ac, which is a shell script using macro instructions, into configure, a full-fledged shell script.

automake - creates shippable Makefile.in data file (which configure will later read to make the Makefile)

Automake helps with creating portable and GNU-standard compliant Makefiles.

‘automake’ creates complex Makefile.ins from simple Makefile.ams

INSTALLER runs configure, make and sudo make install:

./configure       # Creates  Makefile        (from     Makefile.in).  
make              # Creates  the application (from the Makefile just created).  

sudo make install # Installs the application 
                  #   Often, by default its files are installed into /usr/local

INPUT/OUTPUT MAP

Notation below is roughly: inputs --> programs --> outputs

DEVELOPER runs these:

configure.ac -> autoconf -> configure (script) --- (*.ac = autoconf)
configure.in --> autoconf -> configure (script) --- (configure.in depreciated. Use configure.ac)

Makefile.am -> automake -> Makefile.in ----------- (*.am = automake)

INSTALLER runs these:

Makefile.in -> configure -> Makefile (*.in = input file)

Makefile -> make ----------> (puts new software in your downloads or temporary directory) Makefile -> make install -> (puts new software in system directories)

"autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell scripts to automatically configure software source code packages. These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4 macro calls."

"automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Automake requires the use of Autoconf."

Manuals:

GNU AutoTools (The definitive manual on this stuff)

m4 (used by autoconf)

autoconf

automake

Free online tutorials:

Using GNU Autotools

Example:

The main configure.ac used to build LibreOffice is over 12k lines of code, (but there are also 57 other configure.ac files in subfolders.)

From this my generated configure is over 41k lines of code.

And while the Makefile.in and Makefile are both only 493 lines of code. (But, there are also 768 more Makefile.in's in subfolders.)

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reference :

Makefile.am -- a user input file to automake

configure.in -- a user input file to autoconf

autoconf generates configure from configure.in

automake gererates Makefile.in from Makefile.am

configure generates Makefile from Makefile.in

For ex:

$]
configure.in Makefile.in
$] sudo autoconf
configure configure.in Makefile.in ... 
$] sudo ./configure
Makefile Makefile.in

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