On 2021-02-17, Leo Butler <leo.but...@umanitoba.ca> wrote: > I cannot find DIST_COMMON documented in the automake manual[*]. Is this > intended or an oversight?
Most likely intentional, this looks pretty internal to the "make dist" machinery and not meant to be used directly by package authors. > Looking at the automake perl script doesn't really enlighten me, > either. > > I would like to know: > > -what does DIST_COMMON contain by default? Looks to me like it is set to the list of files that Automake will package by "make dist" that aren't otherwise explicitly listed in Makefile.am. So, loosely speaking, it should contain all[1] the files that Autoconf used to produce "configure" plus all the files that Automake used to produce "Makefile.in", plus the outputs of those processes, plus a few other files that get automatically distributed such as the various GNU-standard files like ChangeLog. Probably some other things too. [1] the ones Automake knows about, anyway. > -is it possible to set it or otherwise over-ride it in Makefile.am? Techncally the answer to this question is "yes". Automake allows pretty much anything that it generates to be overridden by Makefile.am, including DIST_COMMON: just include an assignment to DIST_COMMON in Makefile.am, setting it to whatever you desire, and it will suppress the assignment generated by Automake. However, while this is possible, overriding Automake-internal definitions is not generally recommended. If you need to tweak this, consider using a dist-hook rule instead. Cheers, Nick
