Top priorities: * Use info_TEXINFOS * Figure out how to handle MANS * am_error should use printf-style arguments (for eventual gettext scheme) uninstall and pkg-dirs should rm -rf the dir. Merge dist*.am files into automake itself; replication is bad. Clean up the output: * Order rules sensibly * Ensure every line has a purpose. Omit unused stuff * Eliminate extraneous rules when possible (eg 'install-am' stuff) * Make sure vertical spacing is correct * pretty-print targets Need OTHER_SOURCES to hold sources whose objects end up in eg LIBOBJS. Dependency tracking should work here. Maybe if it doesn't exist it should be generated automatically by scanning the directory. (yes) "@kr@" is a hack that should be fixed. And it should be possible to have ansi2knr in just one place in a package. Jim Meyering says just rely on configure to make symlinks as appropriate. Not sure how I feel about this. Consider automatic support for ".y" files. [ not right now; it is nice to be able to print the number of expected conflicts, and we can't handle that ] install-info doesn't have to look in build directory for info files; just don't support this mode. Write autoconf macro to do all work necessary for automake. Eg define PACKAGE, VERSION, etc. Change glob pattern to look for to '*/Makefile*.am', so that gettext's po directory can use a Makefile.in.am (and generate Makefile.in.in) Should 'distclean' remove $(SCRIPTS)? Should 'maintainer-clean' do "rm -rf .deps"? Should look for clean-local targets in Makefile.am. Think about writing a small tool to guess what the local Makefile.am should look like. It might be cool to generate .texi dependencies by grepping for @include. (If done, it should be done the same way C dependency is done) Rename --include-deps to --insert-deps? It would be good to check some parts of GNU standards. Already check for install-sh and mkinstalldirs. What else is required to be in package by GNU standards or by automake? Some things for --strictness=gnits: * "cd $(foo); something" is an error in a rule. Should be: "cd $(foo) && something" Maybe it should be possible to disable all GNU-specific things with --no-gnu? --ignore-standards? But what? And why? Allow ".h" files to appear in blah_SOURCES; just write them out of existence. [ This is nixed for now because of the auto-dependency tracking stuff ] automake.in: should ".cc" really -> ".${kr}o"? This doesn't really seem right, but maybe it is so names can be rewritten uniformly? Must check look in configure.in's AC_OUTPUT command and include those files in distribution. Or consider new CONFIGURED_FILES macro that lists files generated by config.status. Auto-distribute "ChangeLog.[0-9]+"? consider auto-including any file that matches "*.in". [ no: po/Makefile.in shouldn't be included ] must look at mkid to see how it works (for subdir usage) [ right now, it doesn't. i don't see a simple fix right now ] Internationalize. [ gettext doesn't have the necessary machinery yet ] ================================================================ For CONFIG_HEADER, automatically add its input file to the distribution. Don't hardcode the name of the configuration header. Get it from configure.in (AC_CONFIG_HEADER). Get the list of Makefiles to create from configure.in AC_OUTPUT if none are given. [ right now we look for any Makefile.am's lying around I think this is better, because it allows use of subdirs which don't use automake -- eg, stuff from gettext ] Should libexec programs have the name transform done on them? Order the output rules sensibly, so FOO_SOURCES and FOO_OBJECTS are together and rules are in the usual order. Make the output minimal: only output definitions for variables that are used. Look at dist's jmake for ideas. [what is this?] Should handle directory hierarchies deeper than 2. Right now there is no support for this at all. ================================================================ Known Bugs: version.texi handling is broken -- it assumes you only have one .texi file per directory. (*) In any case, the UPDATED information would be different for each .texi file included in a package -- that is my problem. Now, if no package will ever have more than one .texi file (in a given directory), I can just stop worrying about it. If there is ever more than one, we will need to change the name of 'version.texi' to be based on the name of the primary .texi file. Will have to be careful here not to violate MS-DOS name limits. Also will need more than one stamp-vti. [ actually, we could just number them. version0.texi, version1.texi, etc ] [ actually, we can't, because the user could be reasonably expected to want to make dependencies using the name of the .texi file ] [ actually, the real reason we can't is because it wouldn't be obvious what name to include in the primary .texi file. Duh ] ================================================================ Document: Defined variables, their meanings, and their effects: DEFS cpp definitions INCLUDES -I options to cpp CPPFLAGS more cpp flags CFLAGS flags to cc COMPILE how to compile a C program LINK how to link a C program DIST_SUBDIRS directories which are copied verbatim into the distribution. Used eg for directories holding only example code (which don't have their own makefile). This variable might be a bad idea. lib_LIBADD code conditionally included in a library This probably needs to be redone anyway. AM_TEXINFOS override form SUFFIXES additional suffixes Document customary ordering of Makefile.am. From Franc,ois. ================================================================ Libraries: X Need a way to specify library should be installed * Should support standalone library along with subdir library in same Makefile.am. Maybe: turn off "standalone" mode if library's Makefile.am is not only one specd? X Need a way to install library header files. * Need a way to handle shared libraries. It would be really interesting to be able to easily (as the end-user) make many different versions of the library: shared, static, profiling, debug, optimized... X Must ranlib libraries after installing Some examples to keep in mind while doing this: * readline * kpathsea ================================================================ Have a program that generates a Makefile on stdout, passes it through a "config.status" style filter, and thence into make. Why bother, other than the gee-whiz factor? Would it be useful to integrate in some way with the Debian package building utility? Must check.