I have seen both in different things I have configured. What I the difference? Is it notable to use only one? Or does it not matter which one to use?
Any difference between configure.ac and configure.in, and Makefile.am and Makefile.in
autoconfautomakeconfiguremakefile
Best Answer
configure.ac
andconfigure.in
are two possible names for the master Autoconf source file, which is processed byautoconf
to generate theconfigure
shell script.configure.ac
is preferred for new packages,configure.in
is an older name which still works. (The.in
suffix is now recommended to be used only for files which will be processed byconfig.status
, which is the result of runningconfigure
.)Makefile.am
is an Automake source file. Automake processes it and generatesMakefile.in
, which is then further processed byconfig.status
to generate the final Makefile. An Automake-generatedMakefile.in
is not meant to be edited by hand. However, if a project doesn't use Automake (but does use Autoconf), then it will only have aMakefile.in
which is hand-edited.For further details see http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Making-configure-Scripts.html - particularly the diagrams.