automake works by generating Makefile.in from Makefile.am. From the former, autoconf generates Makefile actually used.

automake will not copy comments delimited with ## over into the output file.

automake employs a uniform naming scheme in which primaries that tell it what is being built. One is PROGRAMS including bin_PROGRAMS, sbin_PROGRAMS, noinst_PROGRAMS, etc. You are used to seeing these in Makefile.am.

The primaries automake recognizes are:

• PROGRAMS—to build executable binaries, mostly from C/C++, lex, yacc, with the help of many other tools.
• LIBRARIES—an intermediate form for building the binary and/or distributing software to others.
• LISP (yeah, right)
• PYTHON (without comment)
• JAVA (without comment)
• SCRIPTS—for distribution in the package; an artificial intermediate source is established, usually the resulting script name unsurprisingly suffixed with .in.
• DATA (beats me so far)
• MANS—for building and distributing manual pages as part of the package.
• TEXTINFOS—related to gettext, a tool that supports internationalization (and localization) of the software package.

All primaries must be prefixed; to fail to do so is nonsense and an error. Certain prefixes to the primaries have meaning...

• bin_ —the installation directory for binaries.
• sbin_ —an ancillary directory for yet more binaries.
• noinst_ —indicates binaries which are not part of an installation; usually binaries that aid in completing the build of the rest of the package, but are not part of the final package files.
• dist_ —
• nodist_ —
• nobase_ —
• check_ —indicates objects not to built except when make check is run.

automake requires canonicalized forms of objects when it has to make a variable of them, for instance, the primary for an installed binary to be named go-fish is nevertheless referred to as go_fish_PROGRAMS since the minus sign would not allow go-fish_PROGRAMS to be one identifier/token.

automake respects the ownership of common, traditional variable such as CFLAGS by leaving them to the user. (The user is not the package builder who writes Makefile.am.)

Instead, shadow variables are created that will be specially recognized by automake: AM_CFLAGS.

This is a partial list...

(Note: in our sample names here, imagine a special pthread reader-writer locking package subtitled “first-com, first-served”.)

Specify the source files for each (super) target by typing the base name of the package with an underscore (_) rather than hyphen (-) followed by _SOURCES followed by an equal sign and a list of sources. For example,

	lockproj_SOURCES                  = main.c
	lib_LTLIBRARIES                   = libpthread_rwlock_fcfs.la
	libpthread_rwlock_fcfs_la_SOURCES = rwlock.c queue.c
	libpthread_rwlock_fcfs_la_HEADERS = rwlock_fcfs.h

To link a (super) target with an internal library, specify the target name as before along with _LDADD and the library name ending with .la:

	lockproj_LDADD = libpthread_rwlock_fcfs.la

Plain makefile grammar rules may be specified in Makefile.am using meta variables like $<, $@ and $*. It also includes macros.

...is used to specify all of the other files in a package that aren’t installed by default nor specified in any other way including README.txt, AUTHORS and maintenance scripts.

...is used to list one or more subdirectories that are to participate in the project build, but with their own configuration (a different configure.in). Indicate the subdirectory thus, then use AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS in configure.in to configure it as a separate directory (or directories).