7.4.1 Texinfo

Automake can generate rules to build .info, .dvi, .ps, .pdf and .html files from your Texinfo sources. You can declare Texinfo source with the TEXINFOS primary.
Generally Texinfo files are converted into Info, and thus the info_TEXINFOS variable is most commonly used here. Any Texinfo source file should have the .texi extension. Automake also accepts .txi or .texinfo extensions, but their use is discouraged now, and will elicit runtime warnings.

Only the .info files are built by ‘make all’. The other documentation formats can be built on request by ‘make dvi’, ‘make ps’, ‘make pdf’ and ‘make html’.

The generated .info files are by default placed in srcdir rather than in the builddir. This can be changed with the info-in-builddir option.

All of these targets can be extended using ‘-local’ rules (see Extending).

Sometimes a Texinfo file includes other .texi files. You should tell Automake about these using the file_TEXINFOS, where ‘file’ is a canonicalized filename of the main Texinfo file. For instance, in GNU Hello, hello.texi includes the file fdl.texi. variable. Here is how GNU Hello does it:

info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
hello_TEXINFOS = fdl.texi

Exception: the build system will automatically recognize an included file called version.texi. See below.

Automake generates an install-info rule, which installs Info files. This is also done automatically by ‘make install’, unless you use the no-installinfo option. The other documentation formats can be installed with ‘make install-dvi’, ‘make install-ps’, ‘make install-pdf’ and ‘make install-html’ explicitly. ‘make uninstall’ will remove everything: the Info files installed by default as well as all the other formats.

By default, make install-info and make uninstall-info will run the install-info program (if available) to update (or create/remove) the ${infodir}/dir index. If this is undesired, it can be prevented by exporting the AM_UPDATE_INFO_DIR variable to "no".

.info files are automatically distributed, so Texinfo is not a prerequisite for installing your package.